


Arrival

by stayseated



Series: Departure/Arrival [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Gen, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-01
Updated: 2018-04-23
Packaged: 2019-03-25 10:36:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 59
Words: 198,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13832376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stayseated/pseuds/stayseated
Summary: Sequel to Departure and Layover. Missandei finds that it's hard to go home, especially after you have a meltdown, get fired, and alienate everybody in your life.





	1. Missy goes home

 

 

 

With close to forty hours of no sleep guiding her shaking hand like a ghost, she looks at her ghoulishly streaked mascara face through the mirror and the entire world blurs in front of the curtain of her tears. She has the blades of a pair of metal scissors open, and she’s pointing them at her head. The AC in her apartment is broken, and she hasn’t had time to call the repair person. This is why she is stinking in her own sweat. Cans of diet soda litter her bathroom vanity, and there’s a stack of rotting food in dirty dishes littering her sink. She pours herself a steadying glass of rum with one hand and downs the entire glass in one swallow — and then she refills the glass again.

Then she cuts her hair. She snips off just a big, beautiful chunk that she took forever to grow. She gives herself bangs. And then the world blurs again — she starts sobbing because she immediately hates her new haircut. She hears her own wails, and they don’t even sound like they are coming from her. She hears her own screaming as her fingers claw at the mirror over what she has done.

And then the alcohol hits. She hits the floor.

 

 

  
When Missandei wakes up again, she is in a hospital room and there’s an IV drip attached her aching arm, which she sees in alarm. She tries to push herself upright, but she feels a pair of hands pushing her back down. It’s a PA — the one with the ponytail. She says, “Shh, shh, you’re okay, Missandei.”

“What the fuck,” Missy says, freezing in just utter tension, looking wildly around the room. “What happened?”

“You had a tumble. A fall. You hit your head. Your neighbors heard you screaming so they called the police. But you’re fine now!”

 

 

  
She checks herself out of the hospital after she tells the PA to just go the fuck away, and Missandei finds that the hospital staff doesn’t care how she will get home. No one cares that a lowly assistant was assigned to watch her unconscious body. No one asks her why no one loves her and why there wasn’t anyone by her bedside or why there wasn’t anyone invested in her near-death experience. She just collects her belongings — her purse and phone and a cardigan and her shoes — and she hobbles out of the hospital — she is fucking limping? Oh great. She is limping. And she stands outside in the sweltering heat trying to look up the bus schedule.

She catches herself in the reflection of the hospital windows. She sees the bangs. She shuts her eyes. She says, “Oh, God.”

 

 

  
Missy does not even bother getting properly dressed or changing the bandage on her raw arm before she rides the bus down to the office with a narrow-minded kind of focus. She cut her arm from the scissors — because she fell on them when she collapsed. She’s dragging her dusty bag in her tight fist as she swipes her key card on the reader in front of the glass door. It’s the kind of environment where everyone dresses in pantsuits and business suits, and she knows she looks like a goddamn hobo with bent bangs right now.

Later, this will end up being kind of overblown and exaggerated. Later, her colleagues will call her collapse from delirious exhaustion a suicide attempt. Later, her colleagues will qualify the way Missandei just rails on Karen and threatens to just kill the fuck out of Karen’s bitch ass as a mental breakdown and declaration of intent to murder.

Missandei shoves a bunch of papers off of Karen’s desk with both of her hands and then she slams her fist into Karen’s computer monitor, sending it crashing to the floor. Karen is real fucking dramatic and she screams, jumping out of her seat. Missandei screams back. She screams, “You backstabbing _bitch,_ Karen!” with all of her heart and all of her might. “I am going to _beat the shit_ out of your _fucking bitch ass!_ I am going to fucking _kill you.”_ Missandei takes one threatening step forward.

And that is about as far as she gets before security comes and gets her. She hasn’t eaten in days, so she is especially weak and woozy, so she can’t really fight them off physically. She just starts crying again and screaming at all of her coworkers, accusing them of being fucking lazy and spineless and pathetic — as security escorts her out of the building.

 

 

  
So, Olenna comes and visits her in her really, really dirty apartment. Olenna tells Missandei that she wishes it could be different — vastly different — but she has to let Missandei go.

“I’m fired?” Missandei says quietly, kind of just tasting the words on her tongue.

Olenna sighs. She says, “I think — we could’ve come back from this, if you hadn’t threatened Karen so publicly.”

Missandei’s lower lip quivers. She says, “I don’t regret it. I’d do it again if I got the chance to do it again. That fucking _bitch.”_

In spite of herself, Olenna’s mouth kind of quirks into a smile. She should not condone any of this. But she also remembers being young and being passionate. She remembers that life is very long and there is a lot of time for redemption. Olenna says, “Take some time off. Recuperate. And then slowly come back. And when you do — if you need me for _anything_ — let me know. I will be there.” Olenna snaps her fingers. “Just like that. If I am still alive, that is.”

“Will you tell them it wasn’t a suicide attempt?” Missandei whispers. “I fell down because I was drunk.”

“Okay, dear,” Olenna says, patting her on the back of her hand.

 

 

  
Gendry hears the news about her really dramatic showdown with Karen and the subsequent firing before he even gets back from the Asshai shoot. He hears it through the grapevine of office gossip. He ends up sending her a bunch of urgent messages asking her if she is okay. She never responds to him, so the second he gets off the plane, he grabs a taxi and he hightails it to her apartment, his heart beating hard in his chest.

When he gets there, he finds her half-naked — because her air conditioning unit is still broken — and there is the smell of mold and cheesy food — he later figures out that the cheesy smell is actually the odor of rot mixed with sweat.

“Oh, wow,” he says, looking down at her. She is lying on the floor and clutching her phone to her chest. She looks catatonic. She tells him she has no job anymore. She starts crying over it.

“Wow,” he repeats.

 

 

  
He bends down and he picks up her sweaty body, depositing her on something softer — her couch. He decides that she cannot be depressed in her apartment like this anymore because she might die from heatstroke. He leaves her on the sofa as he goes into her bedroom to pack her a bag.

She doesn’t protest much, as he drags her down to another waiting taxi. He takes her to his apartment.

 

 

  
He’s seated on his armchair in the living room and waiting for her with food, as she comes out of his bathroom dressed in one of his oversized t-shirts and no pants. She is gently scrunching up her hair with a towel. She is gingerly touching her new bangs. She says she really hates them.

 

 

  
Her eyes are aching from crying so much and her arm is also aching. Her body is too weak to hold up her own weight, so that is why she keeps lying down on the floor. Gendry tells her to get the fuck off his floor and just lie down the couch. She tells him that the couch is leather and she hates lying on it because it’s so slick and so nonporous. She stares up at his ceiling fan. She says, “How did I get here?” She says, “How is this my life?”

She shuts her eyes when Gendry suggests that maybe she just give herself a break. She has been going really hard for the better part of five years. It’s impossible to go this hard for this long. He talks about crashing and burning — about her crashing and burning — as inevitable. He tells her that it was bound to happen, and that it happens to the best of them.

She says, “That bitch Karen pretended to be my friend. And then that bitch stabbed me in the back. And then that bitch stole my job.”

He says, “It’s just a job. You’ll find a new one.”

 

 

  
She starts crying pathetically again, on the floor, when Gendry tries to convince her to go home, home to King’s Landing, by asking her when the last time she was really happy was. He thinks that he can get her to admit that it was when she was at home with all of her friends and her family. He is always trying to encourage her to go and visit those effers every now and then.

But she thwarts him and his clunky efforts. She is not an idiot. She knows what he is angling at. Home is where the heart is and all of that. Isn’t that just the case for orphans though? There is no home but where home is, inside of all of them.

“What the _hell_ are you going on about?” he says.

She sniffs. She brokenly says, “The last time I was really, truly happy, I was with him. He made me dinner — he made this food from his hometown and he said to me, ‘Baby, look. Our foods are totally the same.’” She is leaking out so much snot from her face right now. She reaches to wipe her sore and tender face with her wrists. Through her stuffy nose, she says, “He said that we might share some of the same ancestry and that we should do a DNA test together one of these days. And I was like, ‘Grey, why are you always trying to see if we’re related, you weirdo?’” She whimpers. “And then he told me he really loved me.” Her face crumples up and she starts sobbing again, this time through her hands.

“Wow,” Gendry says. “That is . . . a story.”

 

 

  
Baby steps. She doesn’t give up her apartment in Volantis just yet. She doesn’t know what she is coming back to — if there is anything to come back to. She tells Gendry and herself that it’s just a visit. She has a friend getting married and while she RSVP’d no to his wedding, that was back when she thought she was gainfully employed. She’s not anymore, so she has the free time and the frequent flyer miles to attend this wedding. She doesn’t know what to get them, wedding present-wise. She doesn’t know where they are registered. Maybe she should give them cold hard cash.

She touches her hair when he drops her off at the airport. She says, “Oh God, I look hideous.”

He laughs, touching her cheek. He assuringly says, “You definitely have seen better days.”

She hugs him tightly. He is the best and only new friend she has made in the last five years. He might be her only friend left on the fucking planet because she might’ve alienated everyone else in her life. She gives him a firm kiss on the cheek and she says, “I’ll come back soon.” She also says, “But come visit me, too. I can show you around my hood. I will introduce you to the one other friend that I have.” She does not even know who she is referring to.

 

 

  
In the time that she has been gone, her nieces have shot up in height and also bra cup sizes. They are like, young women. Camille is in college and has a boyfriend. This is why Missandei barely saw her when Missandei last visited. Sarah has a really cool sense of style that is funky and kind of bohemian. And she buried her nose in her phone the entire time she was around Missy.

In the time that Missandei has been gone, her brother completely got his shit together. He is a homeowner. He is a small business owner. Of foreign beauty supplies, actually. He is dating a woman named Jess, short for Jessica probably.

So it was great when Missandei called him up to tell him that her life is in shambles and she needs a couch to crash on because she no longer has a job. Mars was very alarmed and asked her what the fuck is going on. She told him she does not know what the fuck is going on.

He actually gives her a spare bedroom. It used to be Camille’s room, back when she was younger and slept over more often. Mars drops her bags gently to the ground. He won’t let her carry anything. He has told her that she’s been looking frighteningly thin to him and that he is actually pretty fucking worried.

He freaks out when she takes off her sweater, and he notices bandages and bruises on her arm.

She says, “Relax. I’m not addicted to drugs. I just was hospitalized for falling down.”

He says, _“What?”_

 

 

  
Mars is acting like he’s her dad — probably twenty-five years way too late. He forces her to eat meals, and he watches her like a hawk as she chokes down multivitamins. He goes out and he buys her a jacket because he says that King’s Landing is much colder than Volantis and she probably has not acclimatized yet. She refrains from commenting on the fact that he has a new vocabulary — he knows what acclimatize means, for instance.

He also packs her a snack of dried fruits and nuts in a plastic baggie that he drops into her hand bag. He also gives her a small canister of pepper spray and he tells her to fucking lay down any fucking bitch that dares to mess with her. She hasn’t even told him about the death threat she gave Karen, so these particular words coming from him make her really hyper aware that they are _really_ related. She wears her really ugly nylon jacket from the grocery store over her dress. She makes a swishy sound whenever she moves her arms. He tells her that she looks beautiful. She thinks that it’s nice that he is lying to spare her feelings.

And then he insists on driving her to the wedding and dropping her off there. He doesn’t trust her to drive herself. He is forcefully cheerful and he says that they can bond and catch up during the drive. The entire thing is so surreal that her mind is blanking and she cannot think of any jokes to make about the really pathetic state of her life.

 

 

  
Her nails are chewed down and she nervously presses her hands to the dashboard and looks around for anyone familiar. She is starting to feel really nervous and really scared about this. For one, this wedding is much fancier than she expected. She is wearing a really cheap dress and an even cheaper jacket. She wrapped extra bandages around her arm to cover up the bruises, because she thinks the extra bandages are less alarming to look at than the bruising. She probably should not take off her jacket.

As the car crunches over gravel, she sees a bunch of guys in tuxedos, holding clipboards and directing cars. Her heart is palpitating because when she told Tyrion that she can come to his wedding after all, he just texted her back and said that that sounded swell. She is not sure that he actually put her on any guest list.

“Oh man,” she says, peering out the window. “They don’t know that you’re just dropping me off like this is summer camp. They’re gonna think you’re trying to park. Oh man, how embarrassing.”

 

 

  
She realizes with a jolt and a flood of shock that she is actually staring at _him_ — in the flesh. He’s wearing a tux and he looks very bored as he mindlessly ushers cars through the the parking lot with his arms. A good-looking white man with brown hair — probably one of the bride’s brothers — is assisting him in his duty. They are chatting.

“Oh my God,” Mars says leaning forward in his seat to get a better look out the window. “Is that — is that Grey?”

She immediately slouches down in her seat, trying to hide herself, trying to hide her face. She whimpers out, _“No.”_

Her brother either doesn’t hear her or he is not even paying attention. Her brother has rolled down his window. Her fucking brother is shouting, “Oh my God! Grey! Grey! _Grey!_ It’s us, man!”

 

 

 

 

 

 


	2. Missy attends a wedding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Missy is alienated from all of her old friends because they probably think she's nuts, also currently not super pretty. Grey is pretty adamant about having a non-response to all of it.

 

 

 

  
She keeps her hand firmly over half of her face as Mars’ car slowly rolls up to Grey. Her other hand is pulled into a fist, and she is viciously punching her brother in his meaty arm. She keeps drawing out, _“Nooo. Doooon’t!”_ in a series of elongated whines. Her nylon jacket is swishing with each punch.

This is probably the state that she is in when Grey sees her for the first time in more than five years. She hears Mars’ window roll down. She feels the car stop with a gentle shake. She is still covering her fucking face as she listens to their fucking conversation with each other. Which goes like this:

“Oh holy shit, man! I haven’t see you in forever, man! How are ya!”

“Whoa. I’m good. Wow. How are you?”

“I’m _awesome,_ actually! Man! You look great! God, you so fancy! That tux is like — you stylin’, man! Yo, is this rental or did you buy it?”

“Oh. Uh. It’s, um, sadly I had to buy it. Like, customizations, you know. My friend, you know?”

“Yeah, man. Tailoring. I think it’s totally worth it though. You can wear this to a lot of things. Man! Can you do a quick spin for me? I wanna see how this looks in the back. Shit, maybe I should get me one of these! What do you think, Miss!”

She feels herself being roughly jostled, with Mars’ hand on her shoulder. She feels like her face is _on fucking fire._ She has almost convinced herself that this is a dream, and he will just go away if she never looks directly at him.

“Ha-ha, she is so dramatic,” Mars says, grabbing her wrist and wrenching it off of her face. “I think she’s embarrassed to see you because she gave herself a bad haircut.”

Oh. God. He needs to shut up.

She’s still uncomfortably slouched in her seat — and her wrist is still fighting with Mars’ firm grip — as she plasters this tense smile on her face and finally looks over at Grey. He kind of looks amazing and all fucking normal and untraumatized. He kind of looks like the dream version of him that her brain sometimes conjures up to torture her heart. He kind of looks like how she remembers what it felt like, to fall in love with him. The way he looks makes her feel like shit. And she is _amazed_ that she is not sobbing her guts out hysterically right now.

She says, “Hey, what’s up?”

He actually holds up his clipboard. He actually says, “You guys are not on the list. Did you RSVP?”

“Oh, I’m not here for the wedding,” Mars explains. “I’m just here to drop Missy off. She can’t drive because she might end up killing herself because of these brittle bones she has. Ha! Also, her license has lapsed.”

Fucking great. This is amazing.

Grey astutely says, “Well, this is awkward.” He’s referring to her not being on the list though. He’s not referring to her whole fucking _being_ and everything she is fucking _about._ He says, “Give me a second,” as he holds up his phone and starts punching in a number, stepping away from the car for a second.

When Grey has his back turned, she reaches over and she shoves Mars with all of her might — with both of her hands. She shoves him into his door, and she whines out, “What are you _doinnng to meee!”_

“Oh my God!” he says, fighting off her pushing. “You are so dramatic!”

Grey basically catches the end of the kerfuffle as he walks back to the car and bends down to talk to them. He respectfully refrains from commenting on it. Instead, he says, “So I called Tyrion, and he said it’s okay to let you in. He said he forgot to tell the wedding planner that you were coming. But they’ll figure something out.”

Fucking awesome. Out loud, she says, “Awesome.”

And then nothing happens for like, three whole seconds. It’s complete silence in the car as she stews in mortification.

She jumps when Mars suddenly cracks up. His loud laugh rocks the car, as he pats her on the knee. He says to her, “Well! Get the fuck out of my car! You’re holding up the line!”

“Oh!” she says, heat hitting her cheeks again. She starts scrambling for her purse, which is at her feet. Her shaky hands grab the strap, and then her shaky hands grasp for the car door handle.

She can hear her brother still laughing at her. She can hear her brother talking to Grey. Her brother is saying, “Jesus, what a fucking mess. Say, man, Missy is like, back in town for a while. Yeah, something bad went down with her job. Anyway! Since she’s back in town and _you’re_ in town — you guys should totally grab dinner one of these nights. Catch up _together,_ you know?”

“Oh my God!” she says, pretty much yelling it him. They are making a scene. There is a trail of cars trying to get into the lot. She shouts, _“Stop!”_

 

 

  
Grey tells her that the pre-wedding reception is in the hall. The ceremony will start at dusk, probably in forty minutes or so. He tells her that restrooms are in the front. He says that coat-check is at the counter. He tells her that appetizers are in the atrium. He points to the building behind them. He says, “There.”

She says, “Thanks.” She remembers that the last real conversation they had with one another was really, really terrible and really emotional. She just almost salutes him — for no reason — before she leaves him and starts making her way to the doors.

 

 

  
After Jaime walks up to Grey and pats him on shoulder, he hears Jaime’s soft laugh. He hears Jaime snarkily say, “Well, I think it’s pretty safe to say that you won the break up.” Their gazes drift across to the room to where Missandei is standing by herself in her trench coat that is made of parachute material. She is holding a glass of wine, and she looks pretty miserable.

Grey sighs, breaking his eyes away from the sight of her. Honestly, he derives no joy from seeing her like this. Honestly, it seems like she is going through a lot of heavy shit. Honestly, he been feeling very awkward and very scrutinized because people keep looking to him, for his response to all of this. Like he’s a fucking spokesperson or something. He still has nothing to say to this. He doesn’t know what is going on in her life. He doesn’t know what she is going through. He doesn’t know anything about her anymore. It’s kind of like going back to high school and seeing that the prom queen has become an undereducated and dissatisfied housewife, with the ravages of time written all over her face. This shit is kind of sad.

“Come on,” Jaime says, patting him on the back. “You have a day off tomorrow. Let’s get a drink in you.”

 

 

  
She doesn’t even know what she is fucking doing here. She has so many regrets about this. She is stranded here because Mars is not due to pick her up until late at night because he has to go to the store and have a meeting with some of his employees. She looks fucking crazy. She is probably being self-involved, but she feels like everyone is staring at her, and everyone is gossiping about her behind her back. She is probably making it up in her head, but she thinks that everyone knows about her mental breakdown because the world is actually very small sometimes.

“Hey, Missy!” Pod says, just scaring the shit out of her with his cheerfulness.

Her arms are raised up, as if to ward off his attack. Her heart is still hammering, and she is still recovering from his sunny disposition as she says, “Oh, what’s up, Pod?”

“I didn’t know I was gonna see you here! I thought you couldn’t make it!”

“Oh, I found the time,” she says.

“Awesome!” he says, grinning widely. “Where’s the fella?”

“Huh?”

He rocks back a little on his heels. He says, “Your lad. Your gentleman caller.”

“Oh my God, you’re so weird sometimes,” she says, sighing and shaking her head. “Gendry is still in Volantis. He’s not here because I did not invite him to this. Please do not call him my gentleman caller.”

 

 

  
Drogo is late to Tyrion’s wedding because he made a bunch of stupid decisions. He went out late the other night, and he drank entirely way too much. He spent too much of his morning battling a killer hangover. The older he gets, the worse he is at bouncing back. He also spent too much of his morning trying to be kind and trying not to kick a girl out of his apartment too harshly. But she didn’t get the hint, so then he had to straight up ask her to leave because he had a wedding to get ready for. And then there was all of the traffic and all of the angry texts from Grey demanding to know if Drogo knows where the fuck he is.

When he gets there, he expects to be shamed for his tardiness, but instead, no one cares about him. He sees that he’s not the only one having a terrible day.

 

 

  
She stands in line for a cucumber and salmon dip appetizer. She washes it down with a glass of white. No one really wants to talk to her because she is so hopelessly pathetic. She says her hellos to Sandor and Hodor. Hodor actually does a doubletake when she says hi to him. He looks like he got whiplashed, which makes her feel really great and really pretty.

She makes small talk with Brienne, who keeps nervously looking around the room. It is probably because Brienne is trying to watch for Jaime because Jaime hates Missandei’s guts. She knows this because after she and Grey broke up, Jaime kind of left her like, twenty drunken, _threatening_ voicemails, telling her to never show her ass in King’s Landing ever again. It was great to listen to those voicemails in the midst of her own heartbreak. Missy does not even care that Jaime hates her because she hates him right back. She fucking dares for him to come at her. She will fucking put him down.

Yara takes one look at her — at her outfit, her lack of makeup, her hair, and her shoes — and Yara tells her that they should catch up. For real. Yara pretends that the last time Missandei was in town, there wasn’t ample opportunity to catch up that Yara completely did not take her up on. Missandei does not really bank on this time being much different. It is like everyone is scared of her. Everyone is scared that they will get infected with her fucking pathetic state, if they associate too strongly with her.

During the wedding ceremony, she just grabs an empty seat in the back, which gives her a clear view of everything. The sun is setting in front of them and it gives everything a really rosy glow. The bride looks gorgeous as fuck. Tyrion looks really happy as fuck. The woman sitting next to Missandei cries during the exchanging of vows because she must know the couple a lot better than Missandei does. Everyone in the wedding party — all of her old friends — look really rich and really put-together and really successful. They look really attractive and tight-knit, like they belong in a fucking magazine

She awkwardly does not have a seat during the dinner reception afterward, because she is an idiot and didn’t RSVP correctly. She just stands around and hates her fucking life until Margaery notices and rushes over, pulling Missandei over to her table. An extra chair gets brought out for her. The table is extra tight because she is the eleventh person.

 

 

  
“Can I have this dance?”

Missandei takes a break from feeling sorry for herself, and she looks up. She sees Drogo’s smiling face. His hair is mussed up, probably from his fidgety hands. His hair looks excellent, just naturally. He looks handsome, just naturally. He emits this carefree sexual energy, just naturally. What the fuck. She looks at his proffered hand. She blankly says, “You don’t have to. I know you chose him over me.”

It kind of sounds so mean, but it’s how she’s been feeling, probably for years now. It’s how she’s been feeling after years and years of skipped calls and avoidance on his part. That shit hurt.

He sighs. And then he grabs the empty seat next to hers.

 

 

  
“Remember when you promised me we’d be friends forever?” she asks him. “No matter who I’m dating or not dating?” She’s talking about Drogo’s tendency to go bros before hos.

He sighs again, rubbing his hands over his face. He does this because he was not prepared for this. He thought that how this would go down is that he’d walk over and he’d charm her into laughing and smiling. He’d twirl her around the dance floor so that she’d momentarily forget that she looks like a fucking mess. And then he’d feel a sense of satisfaction over it — over being a good guy.

Right now, he’s thinking that she doesn’t know what he was left with. He’s thinking that she doesn’t know what it is like to stay and what it feels like to be left behind.

Wow. He didn’t realize that he is still so angry with her — _still._

“So I lied to you,” he tells her slowly. “I abandoned you, and I picked him over you. That’s what you’re telling me.”

“You probably didn’t mean to lie to me,” she says.

“I _love_ that this is the story in your head!” he says loudly — even kind of laughing sarcastically over it. “I _love it_ because it’s so wildly _different_ from how I thought things went down! You left _me,_ too! But I see now, how you are the _victim_ here, Missandei. I see how you come back into our lives after shutting everyone out for five years — and I see how upsetting it is that no one dropping all of their shit to come running to you to see if you’re okay.” He shakes his head. “You only need us when you are upset and alone. You only want us when we aren’t pining for you.”

 

 

  
After her really shitty, really terrible conversation with Drogo, she decides to stop feeling fucking sorry for herself. She decides that she doesn’t need anybody to make her feel better about herself because no one can fucking make her feel good about herself. She decides that she is in control of her own life and her own destiny and all of that shit. She doesn’t need his fucking pity dance. She doesn’t need their pity stares. She doesn’t need to be the thing that makes them all so fucking self-assured in the fucking easy decisions that they have made.

They act like it was so fucking easy for her to fucking walk away from the very best thing in her entire life. They act like she was heartless, and like he should’ve been entitled to her always. They don’t know her, and they don’t know what it cost and what it felt like. They are so fucking superior, and they all are fucking _assholes._

The tears in her eyes are tears of rage, as she collects another glass of wine from the bartender. She downs it in one fell swoop and then she grabs the nearest stranger that she doesn’t know — that she hasn’t met before.

She says, “Hi, my name is Missandei.”

He looks rattled. He says, “I’m Daven.”

She says, “How do you know the lovely couple?”

He says, “I’m Tyrion’s cousin.”

“Oh, awesome,” she says. “You’re _going_ to dance. With _me.”_

He blearily says, “Okay.”

And then she just rips her shitty jacket the fuck off, exposing her bandage arm, throwing the nylon bundle and her purse to a nearby chair, not caring if anyone wants to rifle through her shit to find very little cash and a bag of snacks that her brother packed for her because she is a fucking child that needs snack breaks. They don’t even know that she was fucking ruler of her fucking domain before she got canned for the death threat.

She grabs onto Daven. He is kind of rhythmless. He is very tall. He feels different under her arms than the way that Grey used to. She tries not to fucking cry over it. Instead she tilts her face to the open sky, and she starts to sing along to the words. She starts to laugh maniacally when she realizes what she is singing.

She yanks Daven over to where Grey and Dany are dancing all photogenically. She is probably kind of drunk. She reaches out, and she slams her hand into his shoulder — making him stumble over a step, pushing him out of Dany’s arms. Missy’s trying to get his attention. Over the music, she screams, “It’s our song! Can you hear it! It’s our song! Why is this being played at a wedding though!”

It’s a remix of Taylor Swift. The song is about how they are never ever, ever getting back together.

He just stares back at her in silence.

She laughs. Because it is a _joke._ No one fucking remembers that she is fucking really _funny._

 

 

  
Her jacket is back on because it’s chilly now, and she’s sitting on a curb waiting for her ride. She’s a fair bit more sober now. Everyone probably hates her, but it’s okay. In the past five years, she has gotten really good at shedding off her pathetic and hurt need to constantly people-please. She’s picking out almonds from her snack pack and popping them into her mouth when she feels and sees a shadow fall over her. She looks up.

“Hey,” he says.

“Oh, crap,” she says. “Hi.”

“Can I sit down for a second? Or will you try to beat me to death?”

“Oh, you heard that I do that?”

He looks down at her in confusion, which leads her to think that he actually did not hear that she does this. She smooths the material of her jacket and her dress over her thighs before she grandly gestures to the empty curb next to her. She says, “Be my guest. Bummer that you’re getting your nice tux dirty, though.”

“It’s okay,” he says, gingerly settling himself down next to her. His knees are up to his chest, and he’s cracking his thumb joints. “What’s going on with you?” he finally asks.

“Do you really care? Do you really want to know? Or do you just want the overarching summary?”

He says, “The summary, please,” which almost makes her laugh.

“I lost it and went off on the wrong person at work. So I got fired.” She kind of shrugs, as if to say, what can ya do? She says, “I’ve never been fired before. It’s weird and kind of liberating. And also deeply depressing.”

“Are you okay with money?”

And that actually _does_ make her laugh. His practicality and pragmatism used to always make her laugh. She licks her cold, chapped lips. She says, “Yeah, I have a lot saved up — from the sale of my house here and also because I never fucking took one day off in the last five years? So I’m okay.”

“That’s good.”

She looks over at him. She looks at his profile in the semi-dark, looks at his lashes, his eyes, his nose, his lips, his entire face, really. She says, “You look great, by the way. Just really, really fucking hot. I’m not trying to hit on you. I’m just saying that I see that you’re finally done with puberty. Holy shit, you look so hot. So congrats on that.”

That makes _him_ laugh — he doesn’t want to — she can tell. But he does laugh in this choked kind of way. He lightly says, “I’m sorry, but I can’t say the same about you.”

Her jaw drops. And then she is just smiling like — _so hard._ She says, _“Wow!_ You’re _honest!”_

He says, “Missandei, you need a snack. Or fifty of them. Did you not eat at all in the last five years?”

“I’m having a snack! Right now!” she says, holding up her baggie. “See?”

“Give that to me,” he says, taking the bag from her. “What do you got going on here? Almonds, crackers, pretzels, prunes — oh prunes? Gross.”

“It’s to keep me regular,” she says. “You know. The poops.”

Their really cool conversation about bowel movements gets interrupted when a pair of headlights burn right into their retinas. She tries to cover her eyes as she scrambles to her feet. It’s Mars.

 

 

 

 

 


	3. Drogo is mediocre

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chap, we drop in on Drogo's life and find that he's still sleeping with a woman that treats him with a lot of disdain, and he is totally eclipsed professionally by his partner and best friend!

 

 

  
Drogo wakes up to the sound of Dany on a phone call — which is often the sound that he wakes up to on the mornings after they sleep together. She has been helping him keep earlier hours, unwittingly. He rubs the salt crystals out of his eyes as he hears her say, “Irri, do you think I’m fucking talking about shit that half of the fucking population can do while drunk on cocaine? No. I’m fucking talking about art, Irri.”

Being around Dany and listening to her talk to other people actually makes Drogo feel such regret sometimes. It makes him regret the past because he remembers how fucking _awful_ he was to Pod in the past. He used to say really terrible things to Pod because Pod’s greatest crime back then was being young and being inexperienced.

 

 

  
He gives her a kiss on the cheek and a violent slap on the ass before he leaves for work. She jumps and then throws him a dirty look. She is still on the phone. She is rubbing her butt, over where he hit her.

He trusts that she won’t try to steal any of his shit while she is alone in his place. He trusts that she won’t just leave his door unlocked so that his neighbors can go in and steal all of his shit. He finds that his thing with Dany has progressed to the point where he kinda now trusts her with his stuff.

She still does not want to be seen in public with him because she does not want to be photographed with him. It has to be at least a little bit racial. She must be trying to not alienate her fanbase.

Without being prompted by Drogo whatsoever, she likes to go on diatribes that paint him as a real girl, probably because Daario really got to her. She likes to rant and patronizingly tell him all about what life is actually like. She likes to tell him that life is not a romantic comedy — and she is deaf when he tells her that he actually already knows all of this shit so she can really just shut her face and save herself the trouble. She is probably lecturing for her own sake — because she likes to hear the sound of her own voice so much — and she likes to tell him that there will be no fucking romantic gesture ever, with her screaming out to the heavens and to all of the people that they know that she has figured out that she unwittingly fell for him and she really wants to make a real go at happily ever after. She likes to tell him that he should never call her when he is stuck with a flat tire — because she will not coming running to him.

He keeps telling her no fucking shit. Why on earth would he call her about a flat tire? He can fucking change his own tire. She doesn’t even look she can lift fucking ten pounds so why the fuck would he even depend on her in a situation that requires the littlest bit of practical knowledge? He keeps telling her, oh my _God,_ no fucking _shit, Dany!_ And she keeps screaming at him to not fall in love with her. And he keeps screaming back and telling her that he really _does not_ love her because she is fucking really hard to love or to even _like._ And she always acts like he’s always trying to crowd her space with his devotion. And he is like, _what devotion?_ Is it devotion when he tells her to get the fuck out of his house because he has a date? This bitch is _nuts._

But the sex is great because it’s obvious that they both just hate themselves so much sometimes. They are both full of self-loathing and insecurity sometimes.

“Hold on a sec,” Dany says, covering the microphone of her cell phone as he’s nearly out the door. To Drogo, she says, “You’re out of sugar-free coffee creamer.”

“Okay?” he says quizzically. “You’re the one who used it all.”

“Just fucking buy some more!” she snaps at him — just angry all randomly all the time when he says really fucking reasonable shit. He does not even use the sugar-free shit.

 

 

  
Work is pretty normal — still pretty much like a firehose that they can’t shut off. Their really clunky and probably unsavvy method of trying to contain the flow is to keep raising their rates and to keep hiring more people to do the work. Drogo didn’t go to business school. He is just a dumb idiot shooter, so this formula seems painfully simplistic and thus, probably unsustainable in ways that he is too dumb to understand presently. He and Grey always like to joke about when it’s all going to blow up in their faces and just crumble to the ground in a fiery death because they are both bad at business. They are simple people. They just like to point camera at things. They kind of fell into this business. It was only supposed to be just the two of them, pointing camera at things, making enough money just to get by. They did not predict conventional success. They did not predict that Grey’s work would especially be in such high demand. They keep throwing out insane numbers — insane figures to dissuade people from asking for more work — and their clients keep saying yes to these insane figures. Life is weird and unexpected sometimes.

Drogo bought a new car to replace his two-year-old car — just because he could and just because he felt like it. He is changing because of the money. He probably _has_ changed because of the money. His work and his ability to be creative is probably shittier because of the money. He probably used to be at his best with constraints. His best probably revolves around problem-solving and improvising. He finds that now that he has unfettered access to resources, he is woefully mediocre. For Grey, it was actually the opposite. A whole new world opened up for Grey, creatively, when that guy got unfettered access to resources. It turns out that Grey hadn’t been meeting his full potential for _years._ It turns out that Drogo isn’t as good as he thought he was. It turns out that Drogo’s abilities have a limit.

His day consists of not getting enough done, trying not to get angry with people for not reading his mind, and then discovering a bunch of really dunderhead mistakes — including his own. It’s about a normal day.

When he asks Grey what the guy is up to after work, Grey tells Drogo that he’s meeting up with Yara for a drink and some late night happy hour snacks. Drogo invites himself along, telling Grey he’ll meet them after a quick hour at the gym.

 

 

  
Yara gives him a big hug when he shows up, hair still damp from his shower. Grey tries to avoid hugging him because — Grey says — they spend fifteen hours a day together on average — sometimes more when Drogo sleeps over. Then they fucking spend maybe thirty-six hours together straight. Grey keeps telling Drogo that they are past hugging. They are way too fucking close, and sometimes it’s way too fucking intimate.

Drogo does not agree. He grabs onto Grey, and he smushes Grey’s body in his arms. He is an expressive person. Plus, it just annoys the shit out of Grey sometimes, and that is a perk.

When he picks up the menu to look stuff over, Yara slaps it down. He looks at her questioningly — and then she pulls the big menu out of his hands and replaces it with a small laminated card. “Happy hour menu,” she explains. “Happy hour starts in like, fifteen minutes. All appetizers are half off.”

“But I kinda want tacos?”

“But they’re not half off.”

Grey raises his water glass. He says, “She will only let me drink water for now.”

“Babe,” Drogo says to Yara. “You’re a multimillionaire.”

“Yeah!” she says. “You think I got this way by throwing fucking money at full-price tacos?”

“I thought you got this way because your dad is Balon Greyjoy,” Grey says, throwing his arm casually across the top of the booth, behind her back.

“Oh right,” she says, sighing. “I momentarily forgot about the nepotism I benefited from.”

“On top of your unearned inheritance,” Drogo supplies.

“That’s an oxymoron, man,” Grey drawls. “All inheritance is unearned.”

 

 

  
Work bleeds into their personal lives a little bit. Yara is pretty patient as Grey and Drogo talk in front of her about deadlines and whether they have the capacity to handle a one-off production in-house or if they should eat some of the cost and hire contractors and flex up. Grey is kind of irritated that Drogo impulsively agreed to deadlines with the client without going through their project manager. Drogo feels kind of contrite about it, but he generally maintains that Grey generally knew what he signed up for, all those years ago. Drogo generally thinks that things are way less of a big deal than Grey does. Grey sometimes gets overly mired in inconsequential details — and it is especially damaging at this point in his career. He should be focused on just making stuff. He should just be creating and shooting. Grey actually does not have the time to constantly be fixated on stupid small shit like days on a calendar, and Drogo is constantly telling that guy this. But Grey tends to be bad at letting go of control.

 _“You’re_ missing deadlines,” Drogo says — probably trying to hammer his point home in this heavy-handed, guilt-inducing way.

“I _know!”_ Grey says defensively. “And I feel like shit about it. But I’m saying — let’s not make it harder on ourselves.”

“Just let Pyp do his job, man.”

 _“You_ let Pyp do his job!” Grey throws back.

“Okay, so we both have stuff to work on, in terms of letting Pyp do his job.”

 

 

  
Perhaps inevitably, the conversation eventually settles on Missandei. It’s a conversation that they all have perhaps been avoiding for various personal reasons.

He finds that he struggles to even say anything about it that doesn’t sound flat and hollow. Yara finds that she has to work hard to refrain from saying things that are overly negative. She does not want to say anything negative or speculative. She doesn’t want to gossip, basically. Instead, she mutters that she and Missandei are due for a catch-up session. They should grab a bite or something, just the two of them, since Missandei is back in town and all of that.

Grey is perhaps working really hard to stay unaffected — or perhaps he is not trying at all. Perhaps he _is_ really unaffected. It’s so hard to tell most of the time. Grey tells them that he and Missandei had a chat. And it was nice.

“She and I also had a chat,” Drogo says. “And it wasn’t nice.” He clears his throat. “I said some really awful things to her.”

“Oh,” Grey says mildly. “It’s cool that you guys are picking up on your old dynamic. It’s like no time has passed at all.”

“Be serious, man,” Drogo admonishes.

Grey actually looks contrite — a little. He mutters, “Sorry. What did you guys fight about?”

“It’s not important. It’s more that I realized that I’ve been harboring like, a lot of anger that I didn’t know I still felt.”

Grey nods a few times. “I can relate to that.”

“She seems like she’s really going through something, though.”

“Dude,” Yara cuts in, frowning. “She looks fucking _awful._ I just felt sick to my stomach looking at her. Like, I can’t believe that’s Missandei. It’s not just the weight and the clothes — it’s like — I don’t know. It’s like, she’s not even there anymore. She’s not even herself anymore. The excessive drinking and the . . . acting out. And the _crying._ Oh my God, so much crying. It’s like —”

“She’s losing her grip on sanity,” Drogo finishes, frowning.

“Yeah.”

 

 

  
Drogo offers to drive Grey home — or more accurately, he and Yara force Grey’s body into Drogo’s car in spite of his protests. Drogo doesn’t get Grey’s adamant adherence to public transport. It takes so much extra time and planning to get places on time via the train. And then there’s also the occasional nutjob that threatens to maim them on the train.

“I went on a date recently,” Grey tells him, turning down the volume on the car speakers. “With Sansa’s friend. Because Sansa was really bugging the shit out of me about it.”

“Oh, damn! Cool!” Drogo says appreciatively, completely noticing how Grey is offering a personal tidbit about himself, completely unprompted. This is something really cool because it was really hard-won. This is effort that comes after years of fighting. They used to fight like two fucking girls in a relationship with each other, which, by the way, is a description that Yara really hates because it is apparently inaccurate and homophobic. But Drogo and Grey used to fight because Grey was cowardly in how withholding and cold he was and Drogo was needy in how clingy he was — these were the words they screamed at each other to really hurt the shit out of one another.

And after a few meltdowns, they decided that Drogo needed to really stop viciously throwing the fact that Grey had brain surgery in secret back into Grey’s face. Like, they needed to move on from that. They also decided that Grey needed to allow himself to be vulnerable in front of Drogo — he needed to not be weird about telling Drogo simple stuff, like how he got brain surgery and how it was scary and how he thought he was going to die alone.

“How was the date!” Drogo likes to be forcefully cheerful whenever Grey shares personal stuff in order to continue conditioning Grey to keep it up. Keep all of the truth-telling coming.

“It was fine,” Grey says. “We went to the buckwheat noodle place that you like.”

“Nice! Her choice or yours?”

“Mine. I don’t think she liked it that much. She didn’t eat all of her dinner.”

“Oh, it’s okay. Women can be weird about food. So did you guys sleep together?”

“Oh, so you’re just gonna skip ahead now?” Grey says in his deadpan. “You don’t wanna know what kind of beer we ordered?” Then he lets out a long sigh. “No, we didn’t sleep together. It was the first date, and she’s Sansa’s best friend. Come on, man.”

Drogo chuckles. “I really just wanna hear the good parts. The sexy parts.”

“Well, no sexy parts, man,” Grey says. “I dunno, Drogo. She’s a fine person, and it was a nice dinner. But I just feel _empty_ inside. Is that normal? I just feel like I don’t have a soul left to pump out any substantial human emotions.” Grey laughs, too, slouching down a little bit more, as much as his seatbelt will allow.

“Man,” Drogo says. “I’m starting to think that it’s normal, myself. I feel empty inside sometimes, too.”

“You know, I’ve been thinking about Missandei a lot — because of course I have. She was like, standing in front of me, all in my face and stuff at the wedding. So I’ve been thinking about her — and just how _obsessed_ I used to be with her. I was just so — I was so wrapped up in how she made me feel. She used to draw out such fucking _feeling_ from me. And I don’t know, man. Maybe I used it all up on her. Maybe I spent all of my feelings on her, and I just have _nothing left_ to give anymore.”

Drogo does not believe his for one second. Maybe he is kind of a romantic in this way — but he does not believe for one second that Grey is incapable of handing himself over to someone else, someone new. Drogo doesn’t believe it, and he’s basing his opinion on the output that comes out of Grey sometimes — the product. Such things don’t come out of somebody who is empty inside.

Drogo is more inclined to believe that Sansa’s friend is just a dud.

“Yo, was she hot?”

“Who?”

“Sansa’s friend.”

“Oh,” Grey says. “She was fine-looking. She was normal. She was like, I guess she was kind of cute. She has like, brown hair. She is average height. And did you not _hear_ me when I told you that I am _dead inside?”_

“I heard you, man.”

“Do you think this is all an effect of the delayed puberty? Do you think my life is just laying out like: asexual, asexual, asexual, asexual — brain surgery — puberty, puberty, sex, obsessiveness, aggression, testosterone, puberty, insanity, sex, neediness, emotions oh my God so many _emotions_ — and then bam puberty done. And now I’m in my twilight years, just emotionally castrated with the libido of like, a sloth at the ripe old age of thirty-three?”

Drogo snickers. “Man, I don’t know. You should actually talk to your doctors about this.”

“Nah, man. They just keep telling me I’m totally normal,” Grey says — kind of in exasperation. “Oh shit, I forgot to tell you!” he says, lightly smacking Drogo in the arm. “They’re publishing a paper about me!”

Drogo just starts fucking _cracking_ up over that. “No way.”

“No, for real! I am a scientific marvel!” Grey is trying to contain his own laughter. “It’s going to be in a medical journal and everything. They’re not using my real name, obviously.”

“Oh, holy fuck,” Drogo says, feeling his shoulders hop up and down, as he tries not to let the laughing affect his driving. “Can I get a copy of the report? I wanna read it.”

“Yeah, man. For sure. I’ll get all you guys a copy.”

 

 

 

 


	4. Missy doesn't have a license

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Missandei breaks the law and is shocked that there are consequences to this. She just can't catch a break.

 

 

  
Weeks go buy and no one besides Obara reaches out. This is not at all a surprise for Missy, but it still kind of stings all the same. She keeps telling herself that people are probably busy with their lives and stuff. And also, based on what Drogo said, she is probably an emotional vampire that sucks up people’s lifeblood and leaves them as empty shells.

It’s a little tough for her to meet with Obara because Mars works long hours on the weekends and cannot easily drive her into the city proper for a playdate with her friend. She feels weirdly self-conscious about asking Obara to come to her in the suburbs. It would take so much fucking effort to get to the nearest train line — she does not feel like walking three miles.

So she takes Mars’ spare car without telling him.

 

 

  
When stone-cold Obara sees her for the first time in a very long time, Obara starts crying — which makes Missy start crying too. It’s kind of ridiculous looking because they are meeting in a cafe in the middle of the day, and the people also waiting for a table around them are trying not to stare.

“Oh, _Miss,”_ Obara says, cupping Missandei’s cheeks with both hands. “You do not look good. Are you okay?”

 

 

  
Obara watches her like a hawk when their food gets delivered. Obara is probably watching for signs of her eating disorder, for the anorexia or bulimia. The truth is fairly typical and fairly unexciting. Missandei just forgets to eat when she gets really stressed out. The insomnia thing was making her really batty and unable to see anything clearly. The insomnia thing also cloaked the weight loss. She thought that it was lack of sleep that was affecting her energy levels, her inability to walk up a flight of stairs without getting winded. Her weight loss has been so gradual that she didn’t really actively know it. However, there was probably a subconscious part of her that knew it, because she started wearing baggy clothes to hide her body.

“I lost a lot of boob weight,” Missandei says, pulling at her stretchy shirt collar to look at the boobs in question. “I also lost a lot of ass. Like, my pants fall down when I run because there’s no ass to hold them up.”

Upon seeing Obara’s strained smiled, Missandei says, “I’m just joking. I don’t run. I can’t because I get so tired, and I’m afraid I will collapse and die from the exertion.”

Obara just shakes her head slowly. She says, “This isn’t funny.”

Missandei says, “It’s a little funny.”

 

 

  
Over lunch, they talk way too much about her and not enough about Obara. It’s possible it’s because Obara is realizing that she has so many upper middle class problems — like how her boss is spineless and never sticks up for her, which gets in the way of getting freight moved across the ocean in a timely manner — the horror. Obara is too ashamed of her problems presently to talk about them with Missandei.

Instead, they just focus on Missandei’s problems. Missandei listens to Obara just list them off — number one is the weight and health thing. Number two is the obsessive work tendencies, which are really unhealthy. Number three is — ironically — her current idleness, the fact that she just parks her ass in front of the TV for hours at a time because she is so bored and has nothing to do.

Listening to Obara list out her problems is actually really irritating. Just like it is really annoying to listen to Mars constantly list out her problems and express to her how worried he is for her.

Because she already knows what her problems are. She already knows she is hideous and no man will love her ever again. She already knows that she was killing herself in the name of work — she knows because she basically suffered a psychotic break and was hospitalized for collapsing on a pair of scissors and woke up all embarrassed that she troubled people into caring about her. She already knows that sitting on front of the TV is dumb — but the thing is, she is just so fucking depressed and so fucking sad over the state of her life that she fucking needs to focus her attention on fucking _something_ in order to not go fucking insane. It is hard. It is all hard.

Both Missy and Obara are really feeling the downside of time. A lot of time has passed without them performing any maintenance on their friendship.

 

 

  
Missandei is spacing out and thinking about her awkwardly sad lunch with Obara that she doesn’t realize that her lead foot is really pressing down on the gas. She didn’t properly adjust the steering wheel so the odometer is kind of obstructed.

It doesn’t quite make much sense to her initially, when she sees the flashing lights of a cop car. She thinks that it can’t possibly be her that he’s trying to flag down.

 

 

  
Missy remembers being young and being a pretty little thing. She remembers her high school friends trying to be cool and woke — before wokeness became a talking point. They referred to cops as the popo and said that pigs are just always trying to keep them down.

Missandei was an insecure kid, so she hung with a number of overachieving nerds in high school. She went to a magnet school in which popularity was not determined using the kind of factors they saw in movies. Popularity revolved extracurricular achievement. Missy was an artsy nerd. And her brother was a drug dealer at the time, so she kind of thought that the popo should’ve actually worked harder to keep that guy down. Because he was just fucking messing with the lives of all the females in his life. She kind of hid her brother’s line of work from her friends at the time — they wouldn’t have believed her anyway — but she does remember feeling that tension inside, when she listened to people talked about how annoying the police was, for busting them for skateboarding on school property after hours.

So it turns out that driving without a license and proof of insurance is a bigger deal than she thought. The cop that pulls her over is a blocky, clean-shaven white man. He is not at all charmed by her bewildered surprise — when he tells her that she needs a license and proof of insurance to drive a car. He actually seems pretty annoyed that she apparently endangered a bunch of lives on the road because who even _knows_ if she actually knows how to drive in this country? Her ID is from Volantis still. He lectures and tells her that she was definitely speeding about twenty over the speed limit — and then to pull her over and find that she is not even legally allowed to drive this car that she insists belongs to her brother? Well, usually they’d assume the car was stolen.

She just waits and listens to him shame the fuck out of her. She waits and she generally remembers being young and cute and saying something like, “Tee hee, officer! Oops!” and getting out of tickets that way. That shit will really not fly here, so she stays quiet and serious.

She can’t say much to prove that she isn’t stealing her brother’s car, but the cop does give her some grace. He tells her that he thinks she’s probably not stealing this car. The car gets impounded, though, and she gets _multiple_ traffic violation tickets.

 

 

  
She has to get the car out of the impound lot before the end of of the day or else the cost to get it out pretty much doubles. Plus — Mars will be pretty pissed. He’ll be pissed regardless, upon learning she took his car, but he’ll be super _pissed_ when he learns that his car is locked up for an extra day. A lot of times, this is how the poor get poorer. Their cars get impounded. They can’t afford to pay to get it out the same day. They scramble to find cash, only to learn that the fee doubled overnight. They scramble to find more cash, but the fee keeps increasing. Then the fees on the car exceed what the car is worth. The car gets repossessed and sold at auction. And then the sorry person who made a simple mistake no longer has a car to get their ass to work or whatever.

This is not going to happen to Missandei. No fucking way. Not today.

She rolls through her phone contacts, looking at all of the people who will not drop what they are doing to help her out in a semi-emergency. She needs money. It’s hard to pull out cash from her bank account immediately, on account of her cash being held by another country’s bank. She calls Dany first, because she thinks that Dany, of all people, would cast the least amount of judgement on this.

Dany does not pick up. Shocker.

Missandei does not leave a message. Instead she tries Yara, who does not pick up. She tries Ygritte, who is entirely so awkward about being asked for a fair bit of money all at once that she stutters stuff about how she has family — so Missy tells Ygritte to say no more. It’s fine.

It’s when Missy is talking to Obara again — this time on the phone — that she realizes she sounds like a total fucking drug addict who is making up a really convoluted story about why she needs so much cash in a hurry. It's when Obara is saying stuff like, “Missy, I think you need help, hon —” that the lightbulb goes off in Missandei’s brain.

She says, “Man, I’m not trying to get high. I _really_ need the money because of this car.” She is so not addicted to drugs because she does not even know the terminology. She does not even know how the cool drug addicts these days are calling this shit. Getting blazed?

 

 

  
It’s so mortifying and terrible, but she knew she was desperate when she paused over Jaime’s name in her phone and thought to herself — oh Jaime’s rich, and he hates me. Maybe he will give me money for my latent drug addiction.

Tyrion is on his honeymoon, so she calls Grey. Or she calls the number that she used to have associated with him in her phone. There is still a fucking heart emoji next to his name in her phone because she was a real fucking sentimental little girl back in the day.

He picks up after five rings. She hears him say, “Hello?” really hesitantly.

She says, “Oh, hey! Wow. You picked up.”

 

 

  
She remembers that he does not love rambling, so she cuts right to the chase — right to the thesis. She tells him she needs money. She tells him that it’s not fucking for drugs or anything nefarious. It’s because she’s stuck somewhere and needs the money to release a car. She then starts fleshing out the details of why there’s a trapped car and why she is in the midst of getting to the impound lot in a ride-share car. She confesses and tells him she was bad and she made a few dumb decisions — and her brother is going to be really pissed at her.

She’s only a few sentences into the entire story when he cuts in and says, “Okay. Where are you?”

She says, _“Huh?”_ in shock.

He says, “I’m really tied up right now with something, so I can’t meet you. But I can send someone to you. Drop a pin and text it to me.”

“Oh my God, are you really lending me money?”

There is a pause. Then he says, “Isn’t this what you want?”

“Well, _yeah._ But I’m just surprised you are giving me money. Don’t you think I’m going to use it on drugs?”

There is another pause. Then he says, “You told me you weren’t going to use it on drugs. Were you lying?”

“No!” she says right away. “I’m not at all!”

“Okay. So send me your location. I’ll have one of the assistants run it over to you.”

“Grey,” she says, feeling exhausted and deflated now. _“Thank you._ You are saving my life. Thank you so much. I swear to God, I’ll pay you back asap — in a few days.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he says.

“Don’t worry about it, like take my time paying you back? Or don’t worry about paying you back?”

Another long pause. And then he says, “Don’t worry about rushing yourself. Definitely pay me back.”

That makes her laugh.

 

 

  
As Missandei waits for Grey’s courier, she’s also waiting for her niece. Because, duh, she can’t be the one to sign out the car on account of not having a license, proof of insurance, or proof of ownership of the car. Which makes sense because she does not own the car. But her niece is in the same household and is one of the insured under this car.

She texted Camille an SOS and then followed up by asking her what she was up to. She said she was studying. And then Missandei told her to drop everything she was doing and to come running over because it is an emergency.

The courier gets there before Camille does. It’s a young skinny guy with a weird amount of self-confidence. He is not even phased when he pulls up to her in his car, at the impound lot, and asks her if she is Missandei. He pronounces her name wrong. She confirms that she is who he says she is anyway — and then he hands her a white envelope full of money. She blearily says, “Oh wow,” feeling the heft of it in her hand. She says, “Thank you so much. Can you tell Grey I said thanks again, too?”

He looks like he does not even want to take orders from her, probably because he has deigned her as someone that is not influential — she refrains from telling him that in another life, she would so totally own his fucking ass — but then he agrees to pass along the message. Then he drives away. The entire experience is very surreal.

 

 

  
After Camille shows up — getting dropped off by her boyfriend — she looks very apprehensive and unsure. She says, “Hey, Auntie.”

Missandei says, “Hey, honey. Thanks for bailing me out of jail.”

Camille scrunches up her nose. “You’re not in jail, though?”

“I know,” Missandei says. “I just always wanted to say that to you.”

Missandei kind of pinches Camille’s cheek and tells her she looks very pretty. And then Missandei shoves her at the guy at the counter with a wad money and has her sign out her dad’s car.

 

 

  
Camille has to drive Missandei back to her dad’s house. She tells her aunt that her dad is going to be like, so mad. He is going to pitch a fit.

Her auntie says no duh he’s going to be so pissed. Her auntie says she likes to test people’s patience and their love of her.

 

 

  
“What happened to you?” Camille asks during the drive. “Is it drugs? Are you addicted to drugs?”

“Why does everyone think —” Missandei sighs. _“No,”_ she amends. “It’s not the smack that got me.” She maintains her straight face for a few seconds, and then she cracks up, starts chuckling at herself, with her arms crossed over her chest.

Camille is very, very quiet and very, very serious.

Missy kind of shows Camille her healing arm, which she understands, probably helps invite all of these questions. “So what happened to me is — believe it or not — I just worked too hard. I just stopped sleeping, and then I worked myself until I suffered a collapse. Like, mentally and physically. Like, I fell down and my brain broke for a moment there. It was — actually terrible.” Missandei sighs. “Anyway, so this is why you shouldn’t stress yourself out with school stuff — don’t put so much pressure on yourself all the time to perform. It’s okay to get a B. Don’t become like me.”

“Oh, but I’m getting Cs. Sometimes I barely pass.”

“Oh,” Missandei says. “That’s okay, too. Math is hard.”

 

 

  
Shit gets _bananas_ when she gets back to Mars' house. Because Camille is a tattler. Mars took off work early to come home and stew angrily. Beyond that, Mars also brought along his friend and employee Carlo. Carlo used to run with Mars back when, and Carlo is kind of a creep.

Mars yells at her a whole bunch when she gets home — again, like he is her father — and he tells her that she is being selfish and irresponsible. He tells her that she didn’t ask permission to take the car, and she did that on purpose because she knew that if she asked, he’d tell her no because she doesn’t have a fucking _license_ anymore. He tells her that it was wildly inappropriate for her to call up his daughter to ask his daughter to step away from college to deal with bullshit. He tells her that she’s supposed to set a good example for the girls, but instead, she is just a fucking _mess_ who is a barely functional human being.

Missandei gets that he’s angry. She will also agree with a lot of points he’s making. She feels bad about dragging Camille into it, but Camille is not fucking emotionally scarred forever because she had to bail her aunt out of a _car impound lot_. Missandei kind of wants to point out his insane hypocrisy because he brought drugs and a lot of fucking weird men into her life when she was young, and she let most of that go. She kind of wants to accuse him of actually _liking_ that she is such a disaster. It must make him feel so good about himself.

She says none of these things. She just takes the verbal lashing. She just kind of keeps watching Carlo out of the corner of her eye. He’s got a bottle of beer in his hand. He’s sitting at the kitchen table. And he looks mightily amused.

“You think this is funny?” Missandei asks him. “Which part of this show do you find entertaining, specifically?”

“Whoa,” Carlo says, leaning backwards in his seat, as if to be like, oh this bitch. “I was just sitting here, minding my own business, babe.”

“Don’t call me babe. You are gross, and the sound of you calling me babe makes me want to vomit.”

 _“Missandei!”_ Mars shouts. “What the _fuck!”_

Carlo is laughing. Kind of. He laughs with his mouth but his eyes look really assault-y. He says, “You shouldn’t be vomiting. Your body looks like it can’t handle it.”

“Oh, does my body disgust you right now?” she says. “Fantastic! I am fucking going through a lot of life shit right now, but you know what I can take comfort in? The fact that you think I’m currently unfuckable. Thank you, God!”

_“Missandei!”_

“Stay the fuck away from my nieces, you fucking gross creep! Come on, Camille! We’re getting the fuck outta here!”

Missandei means that she wants Camille to follow her out of the kitchen in a flurry of self-righteousness. Camille looks shell shocked — her jaw just hanging open from watching all of this — but she’s obedient. She mutely follows Missandei out of the kitchen.

 

 

  
Out in the living room, Missandei realizes that things have gotten a little out of hand. She stretches her face in a kind of apology, and softly to Camille, she says, “Hey, honey, can you go back in there and ask for your dad’s car keys? See if we can borrow it and go for a drive? You’re driving, obviously. Because I don’t have a license. But don’t look upon the face of that stupid piece of garbage as you ask your dad, okay?”

 

 

 

 


	5. Grey gets closure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grey meets up with his ex to get the money she owes him. Things do not go according to plan.

 

 

 

  
Missandei ends up being a hot topic of conversation in their office because Pyp is an idiot. Pyp ends up telling Drogo that Grey asked Pyp to run to the bank with Grey’s company card to withdraw cash. Pyp tells Drogo because when Drogo gets back to the office, he couldn’t spot Pyp within five seconds and then got pissed that Pyp was apparently sleeping on the job. When Pyp gets back, Pyp actually tells Drogo the truth in a stress-induced panic. Pyp tells Drogo that he was away from his desk because Grey asked him to go give cash to a woman in a car impound lot. Drogo is like, _“What?”_ and presses Pyp for a lot more detail.

Pyp talks about how nerve-wracking and terrible it was when he withdrew money from an ATM using Grey’s card and Grey’s pin number. Like, he doesn’t think he should have this information at all because what if Grey gets his identity stolen and a lot of money is siphoned out of his account? The first person blamed will be Pyp. He also talks about how he was all scared that Grey was sending him out into some sort of drug-deal-prostitution-ring when he started driving and realized he had to go to South King’s Landing.

“Okay, that’s a bit fucking racist,” Drogo says interrupting with his arms crossed over his chest. “And I do not need to hear all the ways your mom fucked you up in the brain. Just tell me the facts.”

“I went to an impound lot and gave the money to a woman standing outside of it.”

“Who was this woman?”

“I don’t know. Maybe his sister?”

“He doesn’t even have a sister!” Drogo says impatiently, as if Pyp is supposed to already know this information.

After Drogo figures out that the woman in question is Grey’s ex-girlfriend, Pyp knows that he has really fucked up. He spends the rest of the day really wrapped up in his own failure and in the betrayal of his other boss’ confidence. He is sure he is gonna get canned or something when Grey finds out that his secret was let out.

Pyp has to stew in this over an entire weekend, because Grey has been off-site on a shoot for most of the week.

 

 

  
Staff meetings are at 10 in the morning on Mondays, every Monday. It happens later than Grey would like because Drogo cannot ever promise that he can be in consistently before 10 AM. Grey is done having this fight with Drogo. He has accepted that there are things he cannot change and things he has to compromise on.

Grey is there at 7 AM, and it’s just him in the office for the first hour. He takes this time to answer the emails that have piled up over the weekend as well as look at his schedule for the rest of the week. His staff starts trickling in between 8 and 8:30 AM, sometimes popping their heads through his door to ask him a question. He does not like empty greetings, so he has asked them not to break his concentration in the morning just to say hi. It’s okay to break his concentration if something urgent needs to be answered or looked at. Mostly, they spend the first hour at work just chatting with each other and getting coffee. For this reason — his relative isolation from them — he doesn’t get clued into the office gossip right away.

Sure enough, Drogo stumbles in at 9:50 looking like he just rolled out of bed in a white t-shirt and well-worn jeans. Drogo smells like clean laundry as he plops down next to Grey with his own mug of coffee and a giant sesame bagel.

“Want half?” Drogo asks, holding up his bagel. Drogo actually doesn’t want to share because the portion is so big — as much as Drogo just knows that sometimes Grey forgets to eat breakfast.

“Yeah,” Grey says, reaching out to smear off half of a slice with cream cheese.

 

 

  
He really didn’t ask any of them for their opinions, but the general consensus among his employees is that Missandei is def on something — most of the staff is convinced it’s drugs, especially after Pyp tells the staff that Missandei looked really frazzled and jittery when he met her to give her money. Osha is part of the minority that does not think Missandei is on drugs, as they have previously worked together and, Osha says, Missandei never seemed like she was about that drug life.

The staff thinks there is def something shady going on. They waste almost 20 minutes of their staff meeting talking about this. He tells them that it’s none of their business and to stop worrying about shit that isn’t their business. They barely indulge him in his crankiness. They are annoying and they tell him that he technically used company funds and also used a company resource — aka Pyp — to bail his ex out, so it’s kind of their business, in that way.

“Grey, you’re such a nice guy. Why did you even give her money?” Meera asks.

“I _lent_ her money,” he corrects.

“She clearly is still interested in you, boss,” Yoren says. “She was probably putting out a feeler to see if you might reciprocate the interest. Why else would a woman reach out to an ex-lover for money?”

“Oh God,” Drogo says, holding up his hand to block Yoren’s face from his view. “Can you not just use the word ‘ex-lover’? I just got a flash of your sex life when you said that, and I didn’t like it.” And to Grey, Drogo says, “You really pulled cash from your company card?”

“It was already in my desk,” he says, gesturing to Pyp. “It was the easiest way.”

“No judgement,” Drogo says. “I know you’ll take care of it. I was just surprised you’d do that. You’re just usually a real stickler for rules.”

 

 

  
Later over a late night dinner, Drogo circles back around to the topic of Missandei. He’s shoveling a bunch of ginger curry soup and vegetables into his mouth before he points his plastic fork to Grey and says, “She’s getting in your head again.” Drogo laughs. “Girl’s been back like, what, a month, and she’s already making you give up your money and run errands for her.”

This has been a topic that Grey does not enjoy workshopping with other people. He did not enjoy it being a focus during staff meeting. He’s planning on having a talk with Pyp about discretion later. He only acted real cool and casual about it because he wanted it to die a swift death. The best way to conflate something is to act sore and affected by it.

Grey has his own way of shutting Drogo down. He knows Drogo like he knows himself sometimes. Grey pauses in his own eating and he says, “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? You’d like if I’d just shift my focus back onto Missandei because then you can stop feeling as much guilt with Dany.”

Drogo throws his napkin at Grey. He frowns at Grey. He says, “You _know_ I’m sensitive about that.”

“You know I’m sensitive about Missandei,” Grey says simply.

“Fair, fair.”

 

 

  
Faithfully, she texts him back within three days and tells him she has money for him. She asks him how he’d like it delivered, if he’d like it in cash, if he has an app that he’d like for her to do a transfer through, if he’d like a wire transfer — she gives him _so many_ options.

He chooses cash — because it’s kind of like a bookend, to close it out like how it began. He also chooses cash because he can admit to himself that he kind of wants to see her again in person, without the distraction of other people and a wedding in between them. In the past, he was kind of forced to give himself his own closure on their relationship. He thinks that sometimes there’s something left wanting in that — something that still feels like it’s missing.

He doesn’t realize that she’s really isolated at her brother’s house — physically. She’s in the burbs and she has to walk three miles in order to get to the nearest train station. Grey thinks that he’s making it more convenient for her by suggesting they meet at the mall between their homes.

She’s wearing loose black leggings and the same jacket that she wore at the wedding when he gets to the mall food court. Her nose is buried in her phone until she sees him walking up to her in her peripheral vision. She scrambles to her feet to say hi to him.

And he finds that he doesn’t really have a precedence for this — therefore no protocol. He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to greet someone that he used to love so much, who used to know everything about him — and who is now a stranger to him. He finds himself feeling emotional about it — kind of unexpectedly — and what still happens when he feels emotional and vulnerable is that he pushes hard on his stoicism button. He gets a grip on himself, and he says, “Hello,” and then he sits down in the plastic chair across from her.

 

 

  
It’s a very weird, very unusual experience — to sit here with her and to talk to her like this. She is actually constantly on the verge of tears — he can see it plainly in her eyes — and it’s awkward to look at. She keeps reaching up to wipe her eyes with her knuckles. She keeps self-consciously laughing and apologizing for not being able to keep her shit together. He’s been ignoring the apologies because he doesn’t think it’s really in his purview, to forgive her for this.

He asks her what she’s been up to in the last five years — because he really does not know. She tells him she’s truly just been working a lot. She was in Ulthos for two years, home in Naath for one, and then Volantis for the past two.

“You were home?” he asks softly.

“Yeah,” she says, blinking rapidly. “Actually for work. We filmed a series there.”

He nods. “That must’ve been nice — and complicated for you.”

The tears really start coming out full force at those words. She starts sniffling and gripping the table — and water starts falling down her cheeks. She nods because she can’t talk for a moment. She swipes at her face roughly with her hand. When she collects herself enough, she says, “It was really crazy to be back there, to live there for an entire year. I thought about you a lot while I was there — thought about what you’d think of certain foods or what you’d say about certain things.”

He sighs. He says, “Come on. Don’t do that.”

“Don’t do what?”

“Let’s not tear open old wounds by saying stuff like that.”

“Then why am I here? Why did you even want to meet up in person?”

 

 

  
He gets up to go grab napkins from a nearby dispenser so that she can wipe her face with it. He returns back to their table and hands her the wad before sitting back down.

And then he unleashes it all on her.

He tells her it was really fucked up that she left him and then just cut off all contact. It was really fucked up how she stopped returning his calls and just coldly left him to deal with the end of their relationship by himself. He tells her that he didn’t expect for her to tie herself to him forever — he never asked that from her. He understands that she stopped feeling that way about him after a certain point because she was just in a new environment and meeting new people. He understands that she wanted to move on — but it was the way she did it. The way she did it was really brutal and really fucked him up for longer than it had to. He probably has this misguided belief that he could’ve expedited his heartbreak if she had fucking helped him along with it a little bit more.

He tells her that maybe if she hadn’t left him, he probably wouldn't have gone on what he thought was a self-destructive bender of reckless decisions — but actually turned out to be some sort of professional renaissance. He didn’t even give a fuck for the longest time, about what he was doing. He didn’t even give a fuck about what should be done and what has been done before. He was just so angry and he just refused to do anything that he didn’t want to do. He thought that would be the fucking end of him, but it ended up working out really well.

“I don’t even know if I’m _yelling_ at you or _thanking_ you, Jesus Christ,” he mutters, staring up at the very tall ceiling.

 

 

  
She tells him she’s just going to repeat things that she has already said to him — but he just was unable to hear it all before — back when he was too raw and emotional about it. She tells him that it wasn’t easy to end things. It didn’t end because she stopped loving him. It ended because long distance relationships fucking suck. When they were together, it was great at the beginning of the visit. But by the end of the short visit, they were fucking at each other’s throats, and they generally parted ways angry. When they were apart, they were living these ghost lives, just distracted all of the time. They were also fighting while they were apart. And she wasn’t coming back any time soon. She wasn’t coming back because of her job, and he was starting to talk about giving up his career and moving to be with her because he missed her so much. They were being young and stupid, and they were fucking lunatics.

So it had to end, for both of their sakes. And when she first tried to end it, he was so distraught and devastated by it — and so was she. So every time they had a conversation over the phone about it, with him begging her not to leave him, with him telling her he’d change everything about himself for her, with him telling her he’d always love her — it weakened her resolve and it made her want to call the whole thing off. She had to be cold and she had to shut him out to make the break up stick.

“I know you feel like I took the decision out of your hands, and just made it for both of us,” she says. “And maybe I did. But I don’t regret it. Because I can actually _see_ what you’ve become, and I _know_ it was the right thing to do. I don’t regret it all.”

“And what about you?” he asks. He’s referring to her apparent meltdown. Her unemployment status. Her thin and unhealthy body. “Was it worth it?”

“Yeah,” she says. “It was. I got to do really amazing things. I got to see really amazing stuff. I created stuff that had _meaning.”_ She pauses. “And I fucking grew a spine. I don’t worry about the things I used to. I don’t let people walk all over me anymore. That is something I will never regret.”

 

 

  
He tells her that they can’t be friends. He’s not trying to put a line down and decree it and plant his flag or whatever — but he doesn’t think they are supposed to be friends. He thinks that he can fully let go of the anger and bitterness that he feels toward her and wish her a happy and healthy life — because he can see that she was a person in a tight spot who was just trying to do the right thing — the brave thing — for the both of them. But shit, he has enough friends. He actually has a lot of close friends. He doesn’t think he needs one more — one that constantly reminds him of the pain of losing someone he loved.

“Okay, that’s presumptuous and self-involved,” she mutters, wiping her puffy face again. “I never said I wanted to be friends with you.”

That makes him want to laugh. She always used to make him want to laugh. He says, “I mean, if I run into you at a get-together or at another wedding, I won’t spit in your face and stuff. I’ll refrain from throwing acid at you and stuff. I’ll shake hands with you and stuff.”

 

 

  
He offers to walk her to the train station, but she tells him that she’s all right. The stop isn’t that far away and he has to go in the opposite direction anyway. She tells him that she doesn’t really need his chivalry. He tells her it’s not so much that as it’s about safety. She gestures vaguely to their surroundings — to the grass and the sky. She tells him it’s broad daylight. She tells him she has pepper spray in her purse. She says, “Do you want _me_ to walk _you_ to your stop?”

He kind of chuckles at that. And they are about to part ways without ever making any body contact — but then he remembers the reason they met up in the first place. He calls her name at the same time she makes the same realization. She’s laughing as she pulls out an envelope out of her purse, flashing it at him. She jogs up to him, still giggling about forgetting to pay him back his cash money. She says, “I’m such a space cadet sometimes!”

So he kisses her then — just really impulsively. He makes the decision in a split second — he thinks that he never really got to have a real goodbye with her — and then he immediate acts it out. He slides his hand over her warm neck, and he pulls her to his face, to his mouth, which starts kissing her, eagerly and with such emotion. He feels her body go rigid — just for a second as she gains her bearings again — and then he feels her grab onto his shirt with both of her hands. He feels her sigh kind of dreamily. He thinks that her mouth and lips and tongue are still soft and pliable running against his — and _this_ is really familiar. His guts just want to shred apart over how familiar it all is. He remembers how it made him feel when kissed her for the first time — like a dam in his chest was breaking.

He breaks the kiss when he remembers they are in public and he starts feeling very self-conscious about being a grown man seen making out in public in broad daylight. He breaks away panting, with her face still too close to his to properly make out her features or her expression. He hears her sniff. He feels her get up to her tiptoes to press her lips over his — just one last small kiss.

He says, “I really loved you. So much.”

She starts crying again over that. He just wishes she’d knock this shit off because it just really derails the conversation because he becomes all concerned about her. She says, “I really fucking loved you, too. You know that. You _have to_ know that.”

“I’ve really missed you. All of these years.”

“I really fucking missed you a lot, too.”

“Good, you should’ve missed me.”

“I really like how you flip from sweet to bitter and punishing on a dime. That’s new.”

“I really like how you can go from sobbing to cracking jokes on a dime. That’s new, too.”

 

 

  
The day after meeting with Missandei, he wakes up feeling better than he has in a very long time. It will take a while before he figures out of it’s a permanent state or if it’s just a temporary lift born out of a personal accomplishment — but he starts his day in just a really good mood. He starts the day feeling like a weight that’s been hanging onto him has kind of lessened.

He starts look at local listings for one bedroom apartments. He thinks it’s about time.

 

 

 


	6. Missy goes "home"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With the world as her oyster, Missy tries to figure out where to be. She ends up going home.

 

 

 

Kissing him was invigorating and inspiring — she kind of felt like a dead car getting jumped back to life by another car. Kissing him made her heart pound in her ears, made her pulse throb like she got hit with adrenaline in the head, and it made her feel so nostalgic for the past. Kissing him made her feel open and vulnerable to maiming all over again.

Kissing him basically put her in a really, really good mood. She feels like she can do many things, now.  
  
She detours a mile on the way home, for instance, to buy herself a massive bacon cheeseburger, large french fries, and a vanilla milkshake. She eats the food for the last mile and half back to Mars’ house, feeling nauseous because there is now so much junk coursing through her system — for a bit, she has to stop every few steps to do some deep breathing so that her meal doesn’t come back up — but she also feels really accomplished.

 

 

  
Things are a little strained between her and brother. Mars stops talking to her with open affection — he stops constantly telling her he loves her. Instead, he is very polite and very quiet around her. He’s been having a hard time processing the little snippets of information that have dropped out of her. He’s been having a hard time reevaluating his entire fucking life with her. He has asked Carlo to explain what she is talking about, why she kept accusing Carlo of being a creep. Carlo keeps trying to sweep everything under the rug, at first trying to tell Mars that his sister is fucking crazy — then retracting and retreating from that when he sees that Mars is sensitive about people calling his sister crazy.

Mars talks to his daughters. Sarah is inattentive and kind of embarrassed by the inquiry, so she blows him off. Camille pauses before answering him — which makes him burn red and it makes him wonder how much he has _missed_ — and she tells her dad that sometimes Uncle Carlo looks at her weird.

He asks, “Has he ever touched you?”

She winces. She says, “Sometimes he hugs me. Sometimes he texts me.

“Like how does he hug you? What does he text you?”

“He hugs me like normal, I guess. He texts to ask if I’m partying sometimes.”

“He asks if you’re _partying?”_

Camille looks distinctly uncomfortable. Because it seems like none of the things she is describing even sound out of the ordinary. Nothing sounds heinous. She whisper-talks and says, “Sometimes he says I look pretty.” Then she cuts eye contact from her dad. She feels like she’s in trouble, somehow. This is reinforced when her dad releases her from the conversation — signalling the end of it by telling her that she should be on her way before it gets too dark. He’d rather she drive back to school while there’s still daylight.

Missandei’s been hiding out in her room — spending more time there after the blow out. Mars stays out in his living room, sitting in the dark as the glow from the television flickers across his face. He kind of absorbs nothing of what he’s watching. He’s still trying to convince himself that everything about what he’s thinking must be wrong. He must be mistaken.

He works alongside Carlo for another week. He talks to Carlo on the phone about shipments, and Carlo tries to be extra congenial and cheerful, possibly because he senses that the end might be near and he can self-correct if he is on his best behavior. After about a week of being tested and being mulled over, Mars tells Carlo that they cannot work together anymore. They cannot be friends anymore.

While he was able to anticipate this, Carlo does not take it lying down. They have a really volatile argument in front of staff. Carlo wants to know how Mars can throw decades of friendship away. Carlo reminds Mars that he’d be dead without Carlo. Mars is so mad because the more time that passes and the more words that Carlo says, the more Mars is convinced that he really, really fucked up by trusting this man around his family. Mars is so angry with himself that he refrains from responding to any of Carlo’s accusations.

“She’s fucking lying. I never did anything to her,” Carlo says. “Whatever she told you is a fucking lie.”

The fact that Mars can’t figure out if Carlo is referring to his sister or one of his daughters just drives him _insane._ He says, “Get the fuck out. Right now.”

 

 

  
Missandei is unaware that her brother has finally ditched his dirtbag best friend — she generally assumes everything is business as usual, with Mars making a lot of excuses for his friends and chucking it up to boys being boys. She’s too used to her low expectations being met that she doesn’t even feel that mad at him. He seems mad at her though — probably for freaking out and the shouting — so she’s been avoiding him, about as well as she can avoid someone she lives with. She’s been reluctant to ask for rides to the train stop, so she’s been extra cooped up in his house. It has been extra claustrophobic.

Camille is a really sweet kid. Camille has been around more. She’s been texting her aunt every now and then, to tell her auntie that she’ll be in the neighborhood and wants to know if her aunt needs to be driven somewhere. This makes Missandei feel extra pathetic, but sometimes she takes her niece up on the kind offer. Sometimes they go to the grocery store together or the mall.

 

 

  
After two months in King’s Landing, two months of stagnation and two months that were not all that relaxing — she thinks that she cannot live like this indefinitely. She thinks that something has to change. She buys a return ticket to Volantis and she packs her suitcase. She thinks that she is leaving things in a worse state. When she came back, she thought she had at least one friend left. It turns out she does not. She might even have a number of enemies. She tells herself that she doesn’t have anything tying her to this place anymore.

She is tempted to text Grey or call him to tell him that she is leaving again and that she really, really enjoyed sucking face with him, the one last time. But then she doesn’t do that. Because she realizes that it’s no longer his job to care about her comings and goings. Because she realizes that it is probably a sore point for him, if she were to call him just to tell him she is leaving again.

Mars looks sad when she tells him she’s going home. For her, the term home is always shifting geographically. It tends to be whatever place she is not currently inhabiting.

He hugs her so tightly before he leaves for work. He has her in a headlock as he kisses her cheek, as he blurts, “I love you so much, Missandei. I am sorry that I could not be better for you.”

She says, “Oh crap,” as she awkwardly maneuvers around his arms in order to wipe her eyes. “I know you did your best. I know you love me.”

 

 

  
Camille drives Missandei to the airport. Missandei does not know why this girl is so nice to her because she spent the formative years of this girl’s young adulthood completely absent. Missy wasn’t around to give much advice on school, parents, or boys — she wasn’t around for high school graduation. She probably was not around for first heartbreak. She was not around for the college acceptance letter.

“What does your house in Volantis look like?” Camille asks.

“It’s actually an apartment. And it’s two bedrooms, on the twentieth floor of a high-rise.”

“I bet it looks really nice at night.”

“Yeah. Actually, it does.”

 

 

  
Nevertheless she hugs Camille tightly at the airport. She kisses the side of her head and smells her floral shampoo. She says, “I love you,” to her niece and she finds that it’s very, very true. She thinks it’s kind of crazy to love another person so easily like this.

“Will you take me somewhere sometime?” Camille says shyly when they break apart. “I’ve never been on an airplane before. I mean — when you have time, that is. When you’re free. And I mean, I didn’t mean to imply that I want for you to pay for my plane ticket. I can save up money. We don’t have to go somewhere far or fancy.”

Missandei wants to tilt her face up to the sky and say something like, oh my God, this fucking child. But instead Missandei just lets the shock continue rolling over her. She says, “Oh, wow. You’ve really never left King’s Landing.” Her brother and Camille’s mom just struggled financially a lot when Camille was younger. Missy remembers this now. She also remembers long road trips stuffed in a car, because Mars was trying to make the best out of a situation. She sniffs back tears because all of these people are constantly making her so emotional, and she says, “Wow. Yeah. We’ll go somewhere together someday.”

 

 

  
She makes a stopover in Tyrosh. She picked this ten-hour layover on purpose. The muggy heat of the city is offset by the breeze from the coast — and it looks a lot like other cities she’s been to, but also just different enough to be its own unique thing.

Probably the last time she saw her aunt and uncle was years ago, when they filmed an episode of the show here. Missandei was slammed and was only able to get away for one meal, so their get-together lasted all of an hour. She only lived with these people for three years between the ages of five and eight. She was very young, so for this reason, all of her memories tend to be overly idyllic and romanticized. She remembers a big house, a big yard, a garden, and people who helped her with her homework every night. She remembers stability.

“Hi,” she says, hiking her bag up higher on her shoulder. It’s been long enough that there’s actually a part of her that is actually frantically wondering if she is saying hi to the right people.

 

 

  
There is so much nurturing right away — just a constant stream of consideration and kindness. Her auntie is rushing around the room trying to do some last minute straightening. They are insistenting that Missandei rest — even though Missandei was initially really determined to just push through it — just stay awake for the entire time so that none of their short time together is wasted on her sleeping. But they basically lock her in their spare bedroom and tell her to take a nap because she looks like she needs one.

 

 

  
She starts counting down the minutes and then the hours. She takes a walk through the yard — she hasn’t seen it in decades, and she cannot recognize anything besides a decrepit swing set that is rusted and rickety. They bought that swing set for her, when they thought she was going to live with them forever. And it was probably too hard for them to take the swing set down and throw it away, when she left them to go live with her brother.

They do ask about Mars and how he is doing. She tells them that Mars is kicking ass and doing really well. He has two really beautiful, really smart daughters. They tell her that that’s great — that they are very happy for him.

She sometimes wonders why her uncle and aunt didn’t have kids — whether it was because of choice or because of an inability to. They both seem like they would’ve been really good parents to a kid. They are kind of strangers to her now, so she finds this question to be entirely too intimate to straight up ask them. Instead, she just continues making these bland observations about their house.

 

 

  
They speak Low Valyrian in a Naathi accent that they have retained over the long years, and her aunt excitedly heaps bowls of hot foods onto the table. Missandei actually didn’t eat or know much about Naathi food until she was an adult and started reading cookbooks and blogs. Mars was too busy and too young to remember how to cook it, so they ate a lot of Western convenience food while she was growing up. She is just constantly thinking about everything she missed out on, because she didn’t get to stay and live here with her aunt and uncle. Lately, she’s been prone to wondering what if — what if her parents didn’t die. What if her parents died, but she stayed with her aunt and uncle. What if Mars never had to drop out of college in order to take care of her. What if Mars stayed in school and then never had his girls. What if she grew up with a lot of steadiness and a lot of love and a lot of stability and absolutely no fear. She wonders who she’d be, if she’d be better, if she’d be lesser, if she’d be innocent and naive, if she’d still end up falling in love with a guy who was probably always just a little bit too good for her, if she’d end up having a breakdown anyway, if she’d always feel like there was something missing inside of her.

Due to lack of viable conversation topics, her aunt asks her if she has a person — a man.

She’s tempted to joke about the many men she has had, but she does not know this woman well enough to know how well that joke would land. She has had four men. Harry, Jared, Grey, and Tarik, a guy that she went on a few dates with.

She tells them no, not currently.

She is actually pretty surprised at the lack of judgement in their response. They tell her that she’s probably very busy with work, which makes her realize that they do not know she got shitcanned for being nuts. So she skips over the details, and she simply tells them that she’s actually not working at the moment.

They tell her that it’s good to relax — it’s smart to take some time away from work.

It honestly is confusing and disorienting — it creates tension inside of her — all of the support and all of the affirmation. It’s not what she is used to at all.

 

 

  
After she hits the ground in Volantis, she adapts back into the Volantene language fairly seamlessly. She actually feels this relief at being autonomous and independent again. Here, she doesn’t feel infantilized, like she doesn’t have to depend on the good favor of others just to get to the grocery store or the post office to run errands. She has her own transit card with a running balance that gets refilled every month. She lives in the heart of the city, in a nice part of town, in a nice building an apartment. No one knows where she came from or who she used to be, so they don’t stare at her and look at her with such regret.

When she opens her apartment door, she’s hit with the _smell_ — she flinches and plugs her nose. She understands now — the extent of her depression and of how toxic her life had become.

She spends an entire day hauling bags of garbage out of her apartment. There are so many aluminum cans of diet coke everywhere. She loves how she used to be blind to this — think it was normal.

Her cleaning capability is limited after a point. She lacks the industrial strength stuff to really get things sparkling. This is why she hires a cleaning lady to do a deep scrub. She has to sleep in her apartment for one night, with it being in the state that it is in. It still feels pretty sweet to sleep in her own bed again, though.

When she sees Gendry again, he is full of self-righteousness. He picks her up in his arms and spins her around. He tells her that she feels a little bit heavier — it can’t be true because her diet is still very new — but she appreciates what he’s trying to say. He’s trying to tell her that she seems healthier than she has in a very long time. He tells her that time at home must’ve done her good.

She says to him, “I think I’m gonna sell my apartment here.”

 

 

 

 


	7. Dany gets her hair ripped out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dany has a fight with Drogo and then goes running to Drogo's best friend to talk it out.

 

 

 

  
She and Drogo have an unexpected and explosive fight because he’s messing with her head too roughly during sex, she tells him to stop, and he doesn’t listen. Not only does he not listen, he actually laughs at her. And then he pulls out a clump of hair — a hair extension. She sees the ribbon of platinum hair entwined in his fingers and all she thinks is that it took fucking two hours of her life to get those put in. She slams the palms of her hands against his bare chest, and she says, “Stop!” She actually yells, “Get off me! Stop right now. Get off me!”

Which to him, feels like the equivalent of getting rape yelled in his face. It scares the shit out of him, and he immediately pulls out of her body. He immediately shuffles backwards stumbling off the bed. She cinches her legs together, and she presses her entire hand over her face, covering it as she pushes herself into sitting position.

From the floor, he raggedly says, “Are you okay?”

“I fucking _told_ you not to touch my _hair!”_ she shouts through her hand.

His face flips from worried to angry at that. His mood shifts as he realizes that she is fucking overreacting. _Again._ He says, “Are you fucking kidding me right now? Your fucking _hair,_ Dany? It was an accident!” He’s getting to this feet.

“I told you not to do something — and guess what! You did it anyway! Fucking classic, Drogo. Fucking so _typical_ I don’t even have the words.”

“Yeah, ‘cause this is the _end_ of the _world!”_ He is running around the room trying to pick up his clothes so he can get dressed in a hurry. He yanks on his pants and hops around trying to gain back his balance, as he says, “What the fuck do you even want from me? Do you just want me to fucking just lie there and not do a goddamn thing during sex?”

“You know what? That would probably make sex with you a million times better for me. You’re fucking _selfish_ and _self-serving.”_

“Fuck you,” he spits, leaving the room without fully putting his shirt on. She hears his loud footsteps retreating. And then she hears him leave her apartment.

 

 

  
She gets up at four in the morning after about three restless hours of sleep. Her eyes are swollen and her complexion is pale in the mirror as she brushes her teeth. She touches her hair and she pivots her head back and forth, to see if she can see the missing bit that Drogo tore out.

Dressed in workout clothes and in her kitchen, she blends another oatmeal smoothie with kale and chokes it down before her work out.

Zane has her push and pull a sled about a million thousand times, until her heart is slamming against her rib cage, until sweat is dripping down her face, stinging her eyes with salt, until she has to fight hard to breathe.

Irri meets her at the door to the building with another green smoothie. Irri is anxious because they have a sales presentation in three days and the deck needs to be redesigned but marketing says that that they can’t get to the deck before Wednesday, which would leave very little room for edits. She needs Dany to talk to them. There is also a delay with federal approval for hand cream, shampoo, and conditioner — so they have to be run to the lab again, possibly re-mix to meet compliance. She also needs Dany to talk to them. Irri also needs Dany to look at all of the product descriptions, all of the data, all of the allergen information, the pricing information, and review a number of vendor contracts.

“You also have to hop on the phone in like —” Irri checks her watch, “— fifteen minutes.”

Dany frowns. “What for again?”

“You have ten 10-minute back to back interviews with news outlets.”

“Oh, right.”

 

 

  
A challenging part of her work is that she has to be “on” all the time. It’s always been this way, from her early days at her college news station to now, giving birth to a lifestyle brand. She doesn’t really have the luxury that everyone else has — to show up to work looking casual every now and then. She doesn’t have the luxury of being caught looking grumpy or tired on camera. She spends the time in between exhausting PR blitzes just trying to nap in the car before she has to slap some energy into herself and put her best face forward, always. And in between all of that — she actually has to _work._ She has to answer emails, answer questions, review materials, have conference calls, have in-person meetings, review suppliers, review art and creative — all things that are exhausting because they require so much attention to detail and an intellectual investment most of the time.

She gets so pissed when the people around her aren’t great. She gets pissed when the people around her have bent priorities. She doesn’t think it’s a crime to demand excellence all the time, and she doesn’t think it’s easy to be friends with people and also demand excellence from them. She thinks that she hates mundanity and routine. She thinks that people who cling to it are weak and need the predictability and comfort because they are weak. She thinks that it’s easy for Drogo to tell her to slow down and relax because he has Grey to pick up his slack. She thinks that it’s easy for Jaime to mock her for trying so hard — as he simultaneously is too chickenshit to risk anything. She thinks that few people realize she is hemorrhaging money — her own, her investors — even though the info is easily accessible and easy logic. It is fucking scary, but that is the nature of risk and she needs the conviction of belief in herself and put out the very best, most marketable products. The failure rate is high. It is fucking scary to risk immensely and to simultaneously keep her shit together all the time. All the shit she hears from the peanut gallery about this is shit coming from people who don’t know what it is like to be brave like she is brave. They say what they say about her because there is something about her that touches on an insecurity within themselves. They criticize because they don’t like something in themselves.

She is sick and tired of being asked for more. She is already giving more than she has the capacity to give. She is doing work that others would fail at in less than a day. She is sick of fielding questions about her personal life from idiot reporters. She is tired of telling them all, over and over, that she does not have a boyfriend because she is focused on work. She is tired of being treated like a sad person because she loves what she does, and no one ever talks to a man this way. She is scared that she has to come up with a boyfriend in order to be marketable. She is angry that this gender disparity is the fucking sad fact of their society. A decade ago, she used to read news about herself and get her feelings hurt over it. Now, she doesn’t read anything that other people say about. She doesn’t need to.

She looks at Jaime, with his face and his pedigree and his family connections, and she thinks that he is flailing and he is aimless because he did it to himself. She thinks that he doesn’t even have the balls or the talent to accomplish even a fraction of what she is capable of — what she accomplished while handicapped by her gender. She looks at him with such resentment sometimes, because he is weak and a fucking waste of potential.

She looks at Daario, now married with a kid — and she thinks that he looks so happy and that he lied to himself and to her. He was always a person that wanted to settle down and just be ordinary because . . . that’s just what some people want. The lie was that he used to tell her was that he used to tell her that he was fighter, just like she was. He actually meant that he wanted her to do her thing during finite hours of the day. For the rest of it, she had to stroke his ego constantly because he was so fucking needy.

Drogo is lazy. And he is not as talented and his work is not as good as he seems to think it is. His work has always been haphazard and messy. His work ethic is sloppy. He stops full short of done and full short of perfect. And he is just okay with it. Drogo likes to talk like he deserves so much respect — and she always asks him _for_ _what?_ What has he done that he deserves so much respect for? She finds him to be volatile and emotional and insecure — all things that he hides in male aggression — which she finds to be really disgusting. The same sort of weaknesses in women would be qualified as hysteria or melodrama. In men, it’s aggression. Sometimes, all she sees when he gets angry is she sees a little child throwing a temper tantrum. She sees a fucking baby. Sometimes she looks at him, and she doesn’t even know what the fuck she is _doing_ with him.

 

 

  
When he opens the door, she holds up the bag of takeout and also a bottle of wine. It’s ten o’clock at night, and she called him to explicitly ask him if he was going to be with Drogo tonight. Grey told her no, Drogo is busy. This is what spurred her on to make plans with Grey.

She says, “Hi,” as she nudges her way past him to put the food on his kitchen counter. She looks at the room. She says, “Wow. You’re almost done. I thought I was coming over here to help?” His bed is stripped and bare. There are boxed neatly stacked against the wall. And all of his equipment have tags on them.

He kind of snickers. He says, “Yeah, I can’t imagine you packing up shit and putting them in boxes. I can’t even imagine you like, lifting things that weigh more than ten pounds.”

She cracks open a cardboard container and pushes it to him, smiling a little bit. She’s shaking her head as she says, “Come on, give me some credit. I wasn’t always like this. I dragged my trainer around on a sled today. That guy weighs at least one-hundred and eighty.”

 

 

  
He tells her that he met up with Missandei to take back his money — apparently a long story he doesn’t want to tell because of the effort involved in telling it — and he tells Dany that he and Missandei really cleared the air on a lot of stuff, which was nice. He tells Dany that he kind of impulsively kissed Missandei before he said bye to her. He says he wonders if Missandei will always make him feel a certain way — like he is losing his mind — or if it he’s just really responding to the memories of them and of the past.

Dany doesn’t know how to respond to this — she doesn’t know what to think about it yet. She doesn’t know how she feels about it. She is slow to process her own emotions sometimes. She does know that she feels tension inside of herself.

He says, “I guess maybe you never fully really shake off your first.”

“Your first?”

“You know, the first person that you love?” And then he laughs self-consciously. He adds, “I’m just making up platitudes now. I don’t know if that’s true or not.”

 

 

  
He makes her sit on the floor against a bare wall after he shoves a bunch of his boxes out of the way. He’s standing and she’s sitting. He touches her hair to move it around her face — he accidentally touches her extension clips and it makes him pause for a moment before he gently continues his manipulations. He deposits a refilled, dirty glass of wine into her hand — it has fingerprints and her lipstick all over it — before he plucks her phone up from the counter.

He lowers himself to his haunches, and he fiddles around with her phone a little bit, before he raises it and points it at her. He says, “Act natural.” And that is an old joke. He used to yell that at her and Jaime sometimes, when he got frustrated with them for being super tired and for trying to rally. He used to get frustrated with them for looking fake as hell on camera.

She hears the sound of an electronic shutter. He says, “You better photo cred me, Dany. You’re getting your picture taken by an award-winning photographer for free right now.”

She laughs — and she sees him watch and look for the right moment before he hits the button again. She says, “Thank you. Thank you so much. Irri takes _okay_ photos. But she’s not an award-winning photographer.”

He momentarily bites his lower lip, still focused on the screen. He says, “I still don’t think I’m really a photographer. It takes so many years of study and you have to constantly be doing it — and like, _yeah,_ obviously I know how a camera works, but I only take photos when other people tell me to —”

“Grey —”

“I feel the same way about the word artist. Sometimes people call me that, and I’m like — ahhh, please don’t. I make shit that other people use to sell things. I’m not really an artist.”

“Grey,” she says softly, smiling at him, trying to get his attention. “You’re the best. And you need to knock that shit off.”

“You look really beautiful right now.”

 

 

  
She tells him about her fight with Drogo because she thinks that she might as well. She tells him the general story fairly despondently — that she and Drogo had a really dumb fight. And the conflict is never really about the content of the fight as much as her own issues with herself. She is so angry over a lot of things, and she sometimes uses Drogo as a punching bag because she has to be happy and perfect all day. She’d like to come home and be able to just be herself — just be truly her shitty, bitchy, angry self. She doesn’t want to come home and play another role.

“Does he make you, though? Play another role.”

“Well, no,” she says, conceding. “He doesn’t. But Daario —”

“Dany, Drogo isn’t Daario.”

“Well, _no shit,_ Grey!”

He looks amused. He looks mildly surprised she snapped at him.

She says, “Sorry.”

“No, _I’m_ sorry, Dan,” he says, shaking his head — still smiling. “For telling you something that is very obvious, something you already know.”

 

 

  
She hugs him by the door when it’s time for her to go home. She wraps her arms around him, and she tries hard not to smell him because he probably smells amazing. His body feels less immense and expansive underneath her arms. She pulls away slightly and she looks into his face. She’s grasping his biceps in her hands as she says, “I think I love you.”

His eyes widen. He says, “Um. . . .”

Which makes her burst out laughing. She laughs and she grips onto him, as she teeters forward, almost knocking her head into his chest.

He says, “Dany —”

And through a smile, she says, “Don’t freak out. It doesn’t mean what you might be thinking it means. I don’t need it to be reciprocated. I don’t want us to be a couple. I don’t need you to be on the hook for all of my shit. I just — I just was thinking that you are just always the bright spot in all of my shitty days. When I’m around you, you make me feel happy. That makes me love you.”

“I mean, if that’s how you’re defining it — Dany, I love you, too,” he says — really easily. The words just come out of him really easily. “Of course I do. You make me happy, too.” And then he lets out a massive sigh. “Oh my God! I was so worried you wanted me to have _all_ of your babies!”

“Shut up,” she says, lightly hitting him in the shoulder.

 

 

  
When she gets into the office the next morning, Irri is waiting for her with another smoothie. She actually does not require that this girl greet her at the gate every day. It’s actually kind of a weird habit. But Dany sucks up goopy, shitty tasting liquid sustenance and starts speed-walking to her office with Irri trotting enthusiastically next to her, talking a mile a minute about the agenda. Irri is weirdly in a good mood, but Dany doesn’t question it because she doesn’t want Irri to tell her about her night. Dany hates it when Irri talks about her life.

“And PR has been getting a lot of calls this morning about your Instagram photo,” Irri says.

“What?”

“The picture you posted last night. Of you and the wine? You gave photo cred to your photographer friend?”

“Yeah, what about it?”

“Are you guys dating! Oh my God! I love it! I love it so much! It’s so cute! Oh my God! He’s so cute! Dany! Why didn’t you tell me! Oh my God! This is the best!”

_“What.”_

 

 

 

 


	8. Missy meets Grey’s girlfriend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Missandei gets her life in order, right before it's time to meet Grey's new lady friend.

 

  
 

  
She finds outs that her ex is hooking up with her former bestie like how people usually find out these things. Her brother sends her an aggressively worded text message with a lot of typos while she is waiting for him at the airport. She spends a few confused seconds trying to figure out what _“Wtf sorry i host read this and the so fucked to!!!”_ means. A link to a gossip news story follows soon after, which clarifies a lot of things — just not Mars’ text message, but just a lot of things in general. Probably why everyone has been acting weird around her. Probably why Dany has been avoiding her like the plague. Probably why Drogo chewed her out and acted butt hurt even though the end of her relationship wasn’t really about him at all. Probably why Grey shoved his tongue down her throat after he yelled at her and she paid him back his money.

Actually, much of it makes _no fucking sense_ at all. But she is past caring about people she used to know.

When Mars shows up, he peeks at her through the open window and really gently says, “Hey, sis,” like he thinks she’s going to lose it and start crying. She doesn’t. She just watches despondently as he rushes out of the car and takes her suitcase from her, throwing it into his popped trunk. He tells her, “Sorry for that crazy text. I was texting you as I was driving.”

“Were you . . . reading celebrity gossip as you were driving?” she asks mildly, ducking into his SUV.

He doesn’t answer her. Instead, he says, “You deserve better than this,” before he hits the gas and they peel off.

“In what sense?” she asks, smearing her thumb across her closed eyelid, pushing out just one teardrop. “They owe me nothing.”

“That’s fucking sad,” he says. He means that it’s sad that this is her perspective. He also means that his feelings have turned again. Grey is back on his shit list, where Grey belongs. Mars means that life seems to be progressively random and kind of unfair. He means that he’s really sick of watching his sister be unhappy. “You hungry, hon? Can I buy you dinner? What do you want to eat?”

She sniffs, trying to breathe through her physiology. She grabs onto the curls on her head, flattens them, runs her fingers down her strands and presses them against her neck. She still hates her bangs.

 

 

  
Through a fat mouth full of creamy pasta — because she’s been picking carby, heavy, fatty foods to gain back some weight quickly — she tells her brother that she’s really sick of being a pathetic loser. It is not cute anymore — and here, she’s pretending that it was once kind of cute. She tells him that she feels kind of old — in the sense that she is too old to start over, career-wise, relationship-wise, life-wise. It seems like the last ten years were kind of a waste — a waste of mistakes.

He says, “Miss, I’ve been where you are. I was even older than you are right now, when I hit rock bottom.” He means that he wasn’t allowed to see either of his daughters for an entire year because he was a shitty deadbeat dad for a lot of their lives.

Missy cuts her eyes away. She mutters, “I didn’t really mean to start a point of comparison — because our situations don’t really compare. I mean, you went through real stuff.”

Sarah fell down a hill while riding her bike with Camille — when he left them alone at his old apartment by themselves. Sarah suffered a concussion because she wasn’t wearing a helmet and had to be hospitalized. Mars felt like shit over the incident. Missandei learned all of this over a phone call. Their moms pursued legal action against Mars to bar him from seeing the girls.

“Feelings are feelings, Miss.”

“Okay?” She kind of laughs through her full mouth. “I mean, you’re right. We can’t help how we feel sometimes.”

Camille is an adult now, and her relationship with her dad is generally okay because of her personality and perhaps the fact that she is older. Sarah is a whole other matter.

“When Amanda and Jennifer started dating other people in front of you, how long did it take you to get over it?”

Mars makes a face — a grimace. He says, “Not that long. Because I was kind of being friendly with other women when they were pregnant?” His voice lilts into uncertainty at the end — not because he is actually uncertain, but because he knows that he was a real scumbag. “I was with Jen while Amanda was pregnant.”

“Ohhh,” Missandei says slowly. “Well, then.” After a pause, she says, “He kissed me when we met up. On the mouth, I mean —” And then she immediately blushes so hard because she does not know why she felt like she needed to clarify where she was kissed. She ignores her brother’s pointed look — her eyes wander up to the ceiling — and she says, “He has a girlfriend, and yet he kissed me. And you know what? Before he and I started dating, he also had a girlfriend, and he not only kissed me — he also slept with me.”

“Are you saying . . . that you have a type, and your type is me?” Mars asks skeptically.

“Oh my God, _no.”_ She sighs at him kind of impatiently. “I mean that I don’t know why I keep idealizing him in my head. He's not perfect. He’s a fairly flawed person, who was kind of jerk sometimes. I need to move on. Move forward. Make new friends. Start a new life.” She sighs again.

 

 

  
She left Volantis before her apartment was sold, leaving the responsibility of it to the real estate agent she hired, who is probably competent. With most of Missy’s sentimental effects digitized — mostly photos and videos — she was able to leave a lot of her furniture and clothes behind. At this point in her nomadic life, she has the perspective that stuff is just stuff.

She tells Mars that she came back to live partly because of him, Camille, and Sarah — because of family. She tells him that while she may not have many friends left because they probably all think she’s a drug addict who will shake them down for money, she does have her blood, and she wants to keep them close now.

Mars wants her to live with him — he might be wanting a do-over, a chance to prove he can take care of her. She doesn’t think she needs to be the center of some guy’s redemption story — and she thinks that she needs to stand on her own two feet and figure it out for herself. So she declines his kind offer. She tells him that she thinks it’s best if she gets her own place.

She actually does not know what she’s qualified to do anymore. She doesn’t really know what she wants to do — beyond something easy, mindless, and low pressure. She doesn’t think she’s ready for something important and big. She’s pretty scared of losing her mind again.

She ends up applying to a part-time job at a soft jazz music radio station as a radio board operator and a production assistant. It’s punching well, well below her weight, but it’s seems really nice for the time being. She deletes a lot of years and experience off her resume so it doesn’t look too weird to them, so she doesn’t have to explain to them that she had a mental breakdown and that is why she was fired from her high-paying job.

She works maybe twenty hours a week, for very, very barely above minimum wage pay. It’s not even enough to cover her rent, but she has a lot of money saved up from five years of being a workaholic. In the same five years, she has perhaps learned that accumulating money doesn’t really matter if she never spends it.

She gains ten pounds and can stand the sight of the naked body in the mirror again. She has dinner with her brother every Sunday night — barring a work shift. Sometimes Camille shows up, sometimes alone and sometimes with Darin. Missy has a grocery store that she can walk to. It takes her awhile, but she gets her license and can drive a car legally again. She still does not own one and sometimes needs her brother to come pick her up at the train station. Her apartment is a mother-in-law unit in the basement of an old house. She can hear her landlords chasing after their toddler every morning at seven, above her head.

She digs around in her old storage unit — from her old house — to pull out some furniture to populate her new place. Mars spends a Saturday helping her haul stuff down a short, rickety flight of stairs.

In the pile of musty stuff, she finds her camera bag, containing her camera, of course, and a few zoom lenses, a few prime. She thinks to herself that maybe she’ll start taking pictures again. She knows that she’s not especially talented and sometimes her method of taking pictures is just clicking mindlessly and hoping that one in fifty photos is good — but it might be nice to just to be doing something with a camera again.

Rolling through the old SD card that’s slotted in the camera, she stumbles on a whole mess — an entire trove of photos of Grey. And a bunch of photos that he took of her. It’s a painful discovery — because these are pictures of them in love with each other — but it’s a discovery that she is very hesitant to let go of. She just cries as she clicks through all of the photos — there are probably nearly a hundred. She wonders if he’s happier now. She wonders if he sees things that make him think of her sometimes.

After looking through the photos just one time, she ejects the card and hides it in the bathroom jar that she also stores q-tips in. She has no decorative boxes or storage boxes, really.

All in all, it’s not a shabby life. Curled up in bed at night, she tells herself that she can grow into this. She can be happy with this.

 

 

  
The first person who reaches out to her now she is back in King’s Landing for the foreseeable future is — surprisingly — Tyrion. Or, maybe it’s not that surprising because he is pretty sardonically non-judgemental. Like, he is okay that she made a bit of a scene at his wedding by getting really drunk and trying to dance-fight with people. He tells her that he took a while to get in touch with her because of his honeymoon, and then coming back and settling back into work, and then his wife gave birth to their daughter, and then he just plain forgot about her until he heard her name come up at a thing — which made him think that he should call her and see how her psychosis is going.

He says, “Oh, holy shit,” when he picks her up for lunch after she finishes a morning shift at the radio station. He’s commenting on the two-story utilitarian building that houses an accountant, a dentist, a software company of some sort, a newspaper, _and_ a radio station. He says, “Oh, Missandei, no sweetie. No.”

 

 

  
He takes her to a really nice restaurant — which is great because she gets to feel like a charity case _and_ she’s really underdressed! She’s mulling over whether to get the squid ink pappardelle or whether to get gnocchi plus a green salad because, obviously, he is paying for her lunch — when he says, “Do you want a real job? Because if you want a real job, I can _give you_ a job.”

“I have a real job,” she says, not sounding at all defensive about it. “It’s fun. Today, I did a lot of filing, and I also ripped discs. Ooh!”

He is kind of amused. He is kind of smiling.

 

 

  
They spend lunch making a lot of small talk, achieving very little depth in their conversation topics. He talks to her about having a really cool, really calm baby. He tells her it makes him feel hopeful about the near future. He tells her that Sansa is kind of a champ and she’s due back at work soon, so they are both kind of nervous about that. He tells her that Jaime is pretty much same ol’ same ol’. He talks a little bit about work, but not too much because he’s trying to be polite, and he doesn’t want to shove her face into how pathetic he thinks her life is. She actually thinks stuff is going pretty good for her, but he’s making it clear that he thinks she’s one step up from hobo or housewife.

She half-heartedly pretends to protest when he picks up the bill and slips in his credit card. In a monotone, she says, “Nooo, Tyrion. Should we split it? No? Oh, okay, if you insist.”

“I’m having a get-together next weekend, so people can see the baby,” he says, bypassing her joke. “You should come by. Sansa didn’t get much of a chance to chat with you during our wedding — and she wants to? I don’t really get why, but she thinks you’re hilarious.”

“Oh my God, your wife has great taste,” Missy says. “I _am_ hilarious.”

“Yeah. Be sure to bring those jokes,” Tyrion says, his face blank. “I hear that other people like them.”

 

 

  
She’s tempted to bring a date — aka her niece or her brother — to Tyrion’s house so that she can have a built-in buddy, someone to make sure she doesn’t drink her face off in nervousness. But at some point, she decides that she’s an adult and she doesn’t need a human safety blanket.

She brings an inexpensive bottle of wine as a hostess gift because why not, and she’s holding it in her hands nervously as she rings the doorbell. She straightens her back and pulls down the hem of her black knit sweater. She has never looked less crazy than she currently does in months. Her bangs are growing out. She looks positively nondescript and forgettable. She flips a curtain of her curls nervously onto the right side and bites her lower lip as the door opens. Tyrion’s house — this new one — isn’t as massive as she was expecting it to be.

She’s surprised to see him open his own door — because she expected him to have a servant or something.

He must’ve guessed what she is thinking, because he says, “We can’t afford a nanny _and_ a butler, come on.”

 

 

  
The gathering ends up being more intimate than she expected. There are only a handful of people in attendance. She spots Grey and Dany right away — and it basically sucks, but it’s not the end of the world. She also sees Drogo and Jaime, which also sucks but again, not the end of the world. She sees Yara holding the baby, and she sees Yara making the baby wave to her.

Missandei has a lot of questions that will probably go unanswered forever. The main one is for Dany. Missy wonders how long Dany had feelings for Grey, if Dany had feelings for Grey when Dany told Missy to not let a guy get in the way of her career. Not that it really changes anything, but Missandei just would like to know if she should look at the past through a new set of eyes.

In order for her avoidance to not be so obvious and weird-looking, Missandei walks up to them with a cup of sangria in her hand. She says, “Hey, guys. Good to see you again.”

 

 

 

  

 


	9. Everyone loves a party

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At Tyrion's barbeque, Missandei mends friendships, Yara cops a feel, Jaime is self-aware, Dany hates herself, and Grey is kind of a little bitch.

 

 

 

So. This get-together is really awkward and weird for her because she is an interloper in the lives of these rich people. After she says hello to everyone and they say hello back to her — after a thick pause — they gradually go back to talking about what they were talking about before she walked up to them. Jaime continues arguing with Tyrion about some commercial property that Jaime inherited from their dad. Tyrion keeps asking Jaime if Jaime knows just how many restaurants fail every year — and run by people who actually know what they are doing. Yara and Drogo go back to talking about fast cars and fast motorcycles.

Sansa is trying to make Missandei feel included, so they have a side conversation within earshot of everyone — about Missandei’s shitty new job and her shitty new basement apartment. When Sansa asks her how she likes her new digs, Missandei tries to tell a funny story about the domestic dispute she sidestepped on her way to get to the train station — because Tyrion got into her head and she feels inordinate pressure to be funny around his wife.

As Sansa rocks her baby in her arms, Missandei tells Sansa a short story about the man that screamed obscenities at his significant other from his front stoop because she apparently brought home the wrong kind of cigarettes. He threatened to beat her face off.

Missandei does not know Sansa’s history with men — she is unaware that Sansa was in a really toxic and abusive relationship for years — so Sansa generally does not find violence against women that funny. And come to think, neither does Missandei. She does not know why she is telling this story in this way. She refrains from burying herself deeper by revealing that it was kind of funny that the guy was chain-smoking the wrong cigarettes as he was yelling at his woman in public.

The story is landing really terribly.

She’s been trying not to look too closely at Dany’s neatly contoured heart-shaped face, Dany’s glossy platinum hair, Dany’s really tasteful cleavage, and Dany’s black stiletto boots, which seem like they’d be difficult walk in because Tyrion won’t let any of them eat inside the house because he does not want them to drop food crumbs on his floor because he does not want to vacuum or sweep up after them, on account of having a very young child to constantly tend to. Missy’s trying not to look at the way Dany just magically glides from from place to place on the lawn because when she looks at Dany, she’s just really struck by how beautiful and designer Dany looks now. She’s trying not to look at how closely Grey is standing next to Dany. Because she keeps imagining Dany and Grey having a lot of mutually fulfilling, photogenic sex together. Like, Dany is probably super multi-orgasmic.

 

 

  
Her inevitable run-in with Jaime is really anti-climatic. Like, they don’t end up bitterly sword fighting or anything like that. She just runs into him coming out of the bathroom — there is only one toilet on the ground floor that they are allowed to use because of its vicinity to the backdoor. He looks up and stares at her blankly when she swings the door open, her hands still damp from the sink. She smears her palms instinctively on her jeans, and she warily says, “Hey.”

He says, “Hey. Cool sneakers.”

She looks down at her shoes. They are actually very plain, very ordinary black Chucks. She looks back up at him. She says, “Thanks. I like your sweater.” His sweater is this mottled charcoal color. It’s also plain and ordinary.

“Thanks,” he says evenly.

Then she steps to the side to get out of his way. She says, “Okay, well, have a nice pee.”

He says, “It’s actually gonna be a poop.”

Which makes her pause — because she’s wondering if she heard right.

“I’m kidding. It’s going to be a pee. But I didn’t want you to think that you guessed right.”

 

 

  
It’s actually an insane and oppressive kind of guilt that prevents Dany from interacting with Missandei in a way that most people would qualify as normal, that prevents Dany from pushing past the detached politeness and saying something real to Missandei. Something like, “I am sorry, but I am getting a lot of my emotional needs met by your ex because he is great and I am pathetic and lonely. We’re also in a fake relationship that is currently a real boon to my brand.”

Daenerys knows that she is a really shitty person — she knows she’s an opportunist. She knows she is manipulative. She knows that she’s been a really bad friend to Missandei for a long time — not the part where she fell for Grey, that she doesn’t really punish herself for because he’s lovely and of course people will love him. It’s more that she is handling everything like a real fucking child. It’s more the fact that she cannot do anything in a healthy and productive way. She is sleeping with Drogo. She is using Grey’s name and his reputation. Grey is too nice and is letting her. Possibly the only difference between Dany and her brother is that Dany manages to feel a smidgen of guilt and regret over the things she does sometimes.

Dany gets really close to Missandei, sort of. She kind of brushes up against Missandei when they both reach for the same sandwich — Tyrion and Sansa decided on this catered, room temperature lunch so that they don’t have to cook, clean up, or even put out plates.

Missandei pauses, then retracts her hand. She says, “Oh, you go first.”

Dany says, “No no, go ahead.”

Missandei says, “Oh, it’s alright. I didn’t really want that sandwich anyway.”

 

 

  
Most everyone has noticed Missandei’s weight gain, but only Yara and Drogo have the good taste to actually make it a huge topic of conversation in front of everyone. They both find the weight gain to be a huge relief, one because Missandei is re-hot-ifying and they like to look at Missandei when she is pretty because when she is sickly and skinny looking, they just feel bad inside and are kind of grossed out by her sharp angles. Two because of her health. When she carries more weight on her frame, she actually looks healthy physically _and_ mentally. Like, they are noticing way fewer diatribes and rampages from Missandei today.

They are simplistically attributing all this to all of the food Missandei’s been eating. They eagerly encourage her to keep stuffing her face so there will be fewer rampages. Yara is telling Missandei to put more meat in her mouth. She asks Missy if Missy would like an additional squirt of mayo. Missandei is obedient and shoving food into her face, but she mutters through her full mouth that this is a weird game they are playing, with vague sexual undertones. Missandei feels put on the spot, but she’s also kind of ecstatic that her friends are being cool with her again. So she eats.

Drogo scans his eyes up and down her body assessingly. They both remember the routine of this — of his benign leering and of her squirming self-consciousness. He says, “You gained like, what? Eleven pounds?”

“Whoa,” Missandei says through her stuffed mouth. “That’s really close. Ten.”

“Nah,” Drogo drawls. “Weigh yourself when you get home later. I bet it’s eleven now.”

Missandei nearly drops the last few bites of her sandwich when Yara spontaneously reaches out to gently touch — or more accurately cup — her right breast. Missandei wills herself to be cool about the intimate touching, as Yara says, “I’d say you’re about another seven pounds away from these babies looking real nice again.”

“Oh, you want bigger boobs in a hurry?” Sansa pipes in. And they’re expecting her to say something corny about getting pregnant because she currently only has baby on the brain. Also, Sansa’s boobs are currently _massive._ But Sansa actually goes sideways and surprises them. She says, “Wear a really good bra. In fact, there’s this brand that I am currently obsessed with because it’s a really soft and really elastic bra without an underwire, but it still provides support. I’ll send you guys the link! You can get a discount on your first order!” She’s talking to the women.

“Is it a nursing bra?” Yara asks doubtfully.

“No!”

Yara shoves her own sandwich — this messy chicken barbeque that smears all over Missandei’s lips — at Missandei before she walks around and pulls up the hem of Missandei’s sweater, exposing her jean-clad butt for Drogo’s benefit. Yara says, “You used to have such a nice ass.”

“Aw,” Tyrion says. “Used to.”

“I used to have daydreams about that ass,” Drogo says, chuckling. “Mostly slapping it until it’s red.” After a pause, after he catches Grey’s expression, Grey’s really tense, really unhappy expression, Drogo realizes what he just said actually sounded like. It sounded like he just confessed to wanting to fuck Missandei doggy style. Which is actually not completely false, but it wasn’t what he meant to say. He says, “Holy shit, I met with my hands! I meant slapping it with my hands, like spanking! I am telling you about one of my kinks!” He starts laughing and then he points at Missandei’s dumbfounded face, all smeared with barbeque sauce. “I know I’m disgusting, but you can’t say I’m not honest.” He reaches over and lightly slaps her thigh. He says, “You are starting to look really good. Keep it up.”

 

 

  
When they ask Jaime where Brienne is, Jaime grimaces and tells them that Tormund is in town. So that is where Brienne is. Jaime then proceeds to briefly talk about how happy Brienne seems to be with Tormund and how fucking annoying that is for Jaime because the happier she is, the less she laughs at his jokes. It’s dumb because it’s like, she can be in a relationship and still find him hilarious, right?

This is the first time Missandei has heard Jaime crush on Brienne — and it is _disorienting_ and novel. She’s new — she doesn’t realize that Jaime is obsessive about this and has annoyed the shit out of all of his friends with his obsessiveness — so she asks questions that she thinks are fairly reasonable and ordinary. She asks Jaime how long he’s been into Brienne. She asks Jaime if Brienne knows. She hears Tyrion groan.

Jaime tells her, “It’s been a while now — probably years. I have lost track of time. And I think she knows, because how can she not? But in terms of like, having a conversation about it like two adults — ah, no. We have not done that.”

“Why not?” Missandei asks curiously.

“Because nothing good will come of it,” Jaime says. “It’ll be weird and awkward and will probably make it weird between us. She’s with someone else right now. I think I’d be a really bad person to date, so I don’t think we should ruin _everything_ good we have just to try and see each other naked.”

“She’s seen you naked already though,” Missandei says, keeping a straight face.

Jaime bursts out laughing — because he’s remembering the Harrenhal episode. He’s remembering how nervous he was about showing his naked right arm on TV.

“But you’re not wrong,” Missandei says, conceding. “In situations like that, you really do risk the entire friendship to try and see if there’s something more there. Sometimes it’s not worth it.”

She’s actually not talking about Grey. Because she actually still thinks that that particular risk was completely worth it. She’s actually talking about it broadly, but Yara jumps to conclusions and Yara thinks she’s being very astute and hilarious when she says, “So, I couldn’t help but notice that you guys,” and here, she gestures between Missandei and Grey, “are barely acknowledging each other’s existence today. You used to be best friends, way back in the day.”

Missandei stiffens. Grey says a whole lot of nothing. Drogo cracks up because he does think that Yara is hilarious.

Jaime says, “Well, yeah. Case in point.”

“Aw, you guys were best friends?” Sansa says.

“Yeah, they were,” Tyrion says, nudging his wife. “Does that make Grey’s betrayal feel better for you?”

“Oh my God, would you stop bringing that up and shoving that in my face? It was a million years ago,” Sansa says. “And yes. It actually does make the betrayal feel better. Like, in that scenario, I was just the thing that helped push two best friends together.”

“Yeah, man,” Tyrion says. “You were the Tormund of that whole thing.”

“Dude,” Jaime cuts in. “It better not be a faithful parallel because I do not want Brienne to move away for five years and to coldly cut off all ties with me.”

“Oh, wow,” Tyrion says. “You said that out loud.”

“It’s all good,” Missy says. “It’s tamer than the stuff I imagined him saying about me behind my back.”

“Oh, babe, he has said it all,” Yara says.

“I have,” Jaime says gravely.

 

 

  
All in all, Missandei is very pleased with how this get-together went. It was shaky at first, but it’s ending fairly strong. She presses her lips into the soft and fuzzy cheek of Tyrion and Sansa’s baby — she lets the baby grab her finger — and then she hugs Sansa around the kid. She actually goes around hugging most everyone — except Grey and Dany because they seem like they do not want her hugs. Grey specifically said that he’ll refrain from throwing acid in her face, and he is open to a handshake, and that is it. So she throws them both a goodbye wave, a cool and unaffected farewell wave — she hopes.

It’s kind of unexpected, when in the midst of hugging Drogo goodbye, he holds her to his chest and he asks her how she’s getting home.

She tells him she’s going to probably take a ride-share to the train station. Then she’s riding the rest of the way back on the nine.

He says, “Let me drive you home.”

 

 

  
Drogo is waiting for Missandei to come back out of the bathroom when Grey walks up and stands next to Drogo, with his arms crossed over his chest. Drogo actually thinks that Grey is going to bring up something about work — because Grey has been just preoccupied lately, and all Grey can fixate on is work, because work makes him forget about all the other dangling, complicated things in his life.

But actually, Grey softly says, “What are you doing?”

Drogo says, “Huh?”

“With Missandei,” Grey says, clarifying. “What are you doing with Missandei?”

Drogo opts for the obvious. “I’m taking her home, man. I don’t want her to fight through the King’s Landing subway system when she doesn’t have to.” Drogo refrains from pointing out that he gives Grey rides home all the time, too. He’d actually offer to drive Grey home _right now_ if Grey hadn’t come in with Dany.

“She’s dealing with a lot of stuff,” Grey says. “Don’t take advantage.”

Drogo’s jaw drops — because Grey is basically telling him that he better not try and sleep with Missandei — because the fucking _audacity_ of this guy.

Drogo doesn’t really get a chance to respond to Grey. He doesn’t get a chance to get mad or express hurt or even express surprise at how low Grey apparently views him. Apparently Grey forgot that Drogo has been bro over ho for fucking _years,_ at the cost of his own friendship with Missandei. Apparently it’s not enough for Grey to commandeer all of Dany’s limited affection and respect, Grey also now gets to dictate who Drogo can be friendly with.

He does not get to have the opportunity to be ticked at his friend. Because Missandei comes out of the bathroom smiling at him. She walks up to them and she tells him, “Ready to go.” To Grey, she says, “See ya around.”

 

 

  
They are both kind of miserable as she drives them back into the city. Grey is miserable because Drogo is rightly pissed at him — but he was emotional when he said that shit to Drogo and he is _allowed_ to be emotional and make mistakes sometimes. Grey is also miserable because Drogo gets to go and have creative sex with Missandei’s new body now. He’s sure Drogo is definitely better at sex than he is, so that sucks and is embarrassing, in a retroactive way. He’s miserable because his current lot in life may be that he is the kind of guy that women like to have long conversations with before they go home and let Drogo fuck them. He has circled right back to high school. He has circled back to being a celibate nerd that most girls overlook because they’d rather be with someone who has actually gone through puberty.

Dany is miserable because she is a terrible person. She is just a really, really toxic and mean person. She has made four assistants quit in the last year. She has said the worst things to Drogo. She has abandoned her best friend. She looks like she has this really wonderful life on paper — really rich, really beautiful, really successful, with a really smart, really handsome, talented boyfriend on her arm. And it is all a fucking lie. She also only ate a quarter of a sandwich before she had to give it over to Grey to finish because she is over her calorie count for the day. She is so fucking hungry.

 

 

  
He pulls into an open spot on the side of the road because she tells him there is only street parking in this neighborhood — which he knows. Because he’s lived here more consistently than she has — but he just lets her have it.

They’ve just been chatting like old times — a little bit about her new job and her new perspective on her life — and also a little bit about how much she has missed, pop-culture-wise, in the time she’s been away. She apparently is not up-to-date on the latest music trends or even the latest tech. Her phone is a few years old and her social media presence is deader than dead.

She shyly told him she’s been taking pictures again, assuming that he’d be politely detached about it, but he actually thinks it’s really, really adorable — and not in a patronizing way, like oh how cute, she is trying. He means that he finds her self-consciousness completely adorable still. He finds her tendency to sell herself short really endearing.

“Do you wanna come in for a little bit?” she asks. “Do you have to be somewhere?”

He says, “Nah, I don’t have anywhere to be. I can come in.”

 

 

 


	10. Grey has feelings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grey grapples with the possibility that Drogo slept with Grey's ex. Is not consistently classy about it. Also, Drogo is in an abusive relationship, and Gendry comes to visit!

 

 

  
Drogo tries to update her on all the songs about bitches and their big sexy asses that she has probably missed out on in the time that she has been away. He starts cultivating a playlist on his phone as she giggles at him, rocking back and forth on the floor, holding her stomach because it aches from laughing so much. Drogo tells her that he’ll share this playlist with her, so she can enjoy it when he’s not around.

He makes her show him the photos she’s been taking. She is entirely a huge, weird dork about it. She keeps saying very nice things to him — that he is a professional and that he does such beautiful work — so it’s nerve wracking that someone of his caliber is looking at her amateur shit. It all sounds kind of strange to him because, honestly, he is always being compared to Grey, whether he’s doing the comparison himself or whether he is getting it externally. His work has not been described as beautiful in a very long time. It usually is talked about using terms of contrast. His work is messier than Grey’s. His work is less meticulous. His work is less thought out. His work is just not as good.

She’s been taking a lot of pictures around South King’s Landing — she tells him it’s just to refamiliarize herself with the city.

He tells her, “These are really nice. I like how straightforward and unadorned they are. I like how you don’t stylize very much.”

 

 

  
She asks him if he’s dating anyone — and he basically tells her the truth. He tells her that he’s always seeing people, but that he’s not seeing anyone special. The deal is that he is kind of ashamed of the unhealthy thing that he has going on with Dany, and he is kind of ashamed of the young one night stands. He avoids talking about it much more by turning the question on her. He asks her if she’s currently seeing someone, even though he is pretty sure that she is not. He is good at reading people in this way.

Sure enough, she shakes her head no. She says, “My vibrator’s my boyfriend —” and Drogo chokes back a surprised laugh as she generally looks mortified because he’s not sure she meant to say that out loud. Then she valiantly recovers and says, “I feel like dating is pretty low on my list of crap to worry about. And I told you a long time ago that I’m pretty much a boring monogamy kind of person. That hasn’t really changed. I tried the casual dating thing for a while —”

“Oh, for real?”

“Yeah,” she says, wincing — probably over the memories. “After Grey and I broke up, I went on like, a flurry of dates with random guys.” She frowns. “And it was terrible, Drogo. They were awkward and weird when they were normal. And when they weren’t normal, I’d get creepy text messages and-or a lot of pressure to have sex. Like, one guy got mad at me because he paid for my dinner — he offered! — and I did not sleep with him to thank him.”

She tells him that there was one guy who was pretty nice. They did end up sleeping together after about six dates — that was the number in which she felt okay enough to try sex with someone new.

“And?”

“It was nice. It was good. I wasn’t like, in love with him or anything like that. He was just a nice guy. And it just kind of fizzled out. I was working a ton, and it became harder and harder to see each other. So he dumped me via text message.”

Drogo laughs at that.

“It’s cool. I wasn’t mad at him. That really _was_ the only way to get in contact with me, in those days.”

 

 

  
She is refraining from telling Drogo that she has this theory — and it’s not revolutionary by any means. But her theory is that for some people, love can be like a flash of lightning — just rare and random and burning and maybe destructive. And it can be hard to come by more than once in a lifetime. She thinks that this is why it’s taking her so long to emotionally let go of Grey. She thinks that she felt so strongly about Grey that he scarred her — he imprinted himself on her — and he’s probably always going to be there, as a measure of the depth of her feelings, as a measure of what she can be capable of. And the difficulty of that is that it’s hard to stop herself from being in love with the memory of him.

“So, Dany and Grey, huh?” she says, trying to keep her tone light.

“Ah, yes. Dany and Grey.”

“They look really good together. And I mean, it actually makes a lot of sense. They have a lot in common, personality-wise. They’re both really impressive people.”

Drogo nods. “Yeah, man. That’s basically what I said when I learned about it.”

“What are they like together?”

She sounds so . . . she sounds like she is invested in the answer of this question. And he feels crappy because of the role that he plays in all of it — he feels crappy over his own investment.

He doesn’t want to lose esteem in her eyes — just yet — he knows it’s probably coming anyway. But they are just making their way back to being friendly again, so he doesn’t want to upset the delicate balance by admitting to her that he’s just a fucking idiot. He’s a fucking idiot because he cannot leave well enough alone and he has to just insert himself into other people’s shit even though he is rarely anyone’s first choice.

So he continues to not tell Missandei that he’s been sleeping with Dany. That’s personal, need-to-know information anyway. Instead, he tells Missandei that Dany is a horrible fucking mean bitch — so that hasn’t changed. But Dany’s one soft spot continues to be Grey. Dany talks to and about Grey with such respect and such reverence. They have a really good rapport, and Grey brings out these good qualities in Dany. Like, she has jokes when she is around Grey. She softens and she smiles a lot more when she is around Grey. They also both know what it’s like to be inordinately brilliant, so they have that shit in common — and sometimes that comes out when they are around each other — in the form of these wildly dark, scary, and deadpan comments that exposes the truth about humanity.

“Does it hurt to hear that?” he asks her.

“Kind of,” she says.

“You do know that their current relationship is partly built on a web of lies, right? It’s partly for the good of Dany’s career.”

“Oh, of course,” Missandei says. “I’m not dumb. I know how that stuff works. It’s like how Jaime used to pretend he was nice so that people would keep watching our show. It’s like how Dany and Jaime kept their dislike of each other under wraps so people would tune in to watch the ‘sexual tension.’” Missy does air quotes.

Drogo snickers. “Yes. It’s like that.”

 

 

  
Grey is a complete and total cold fish to him the next time they see each other, which is at work. Drogo realizes that Grey is like, being weird, when Drogo reads another request to bid from Global Trading, one of their earliest, most annoying clients — one that they keep trying to fire. But it’s a terrible relationship that keeps on hanging on. Drogo reads the email and then he looks up at Grey who, he knows, is reading the exact same email. Drogo laughingly says, “Can you fucking believe these assholes?”

Grey completely ignores him, even though he knows that Grey totally heard him. And Drogo is caught off guard and surprised and — after about three seconds — he is also annoyed.

So for the rest of the day, he gets on Grey’s nerves — on purpose. He refuses to acknowledge that Grey is mad at him. He keeps pretending that things are normal. He keeps making casual body contact with Grey, who keeps jumping away like he’s getting burned. Drogo keeps making jokes with Grey, who often only stares at him blankly in response. Drogo is really over this childish shit because if Grey has something to say to Drogo about Missandei — _again_ — Grey should just open his dumb mouth and just say it. Drogo is not going to pry open Grey’s mouth and shake the words out. That was their dynamic in the past, and Drogo will not go backwards.

Grey actually does crack — at dinner time. Drogo is about to leave the office to grab a bite by himself, but Grey’s voice stops him. Grey says, “You wanna eat together or something?”

 

 

  
They are standing in line for the counter at an empanadas place because they just want to get something quick and delicious before going back to the office to try and make deadline.

“Did you sleep with her?”

“Oh my God, _again_ with _this!”_ Drogo explodes, scaring a few people in line due to the sudden loudness. He’s just fed up now. “I’m _not_ going to answer that because it’s none of your business.”

 

 

  
Drogo is not being very patient with him. Grey’s been trying to process faster, but Drogo should know that he is kind of slow with this kind of stuff. He’s never been a person that’s been able to easily and quickly get an accurate read on his own feelings. So Drogo should give him a bit of a break. But right now, Drogo is being a real drama queen and messily spreading out their haul all over Osha’s desk. Drogo’s randomly uncapping sauce containers and uncaringly dropping them down on the table before Grey even gets a chance to move aside some of her stuff. She hates it when they drip food over her shit and she yells at them for it — which Grey cannot really fault her for.

Drogo cracks open an empanada made from plantains — these are his favorite — and he dips it in chimichurri before shoving the hot bundle in his mouth. He hisses because it’s still so hot. He says, “Oh shit, we need a fork for the slaw,” as he digs around the paper bag for utensils and napkins.

“D,” Grey says, deciding just to go for it now. “You remember how fucking crazy cool I was when you started sleeping with Dany? And I was like, ‘Yeah man, I don’t own her. You guys are adults. Do what you want with each other.’ Do you remember how chill I was about that?”

“Yeah, man,” Drogo says. “It was _bizarre.”_

“Okay, well check this — I am totally _not_ okay — _emotionally_ — about you doing the same with Missandei. Like, I get that it’s the same sort of situation, where I don’t own her and you guys are adults who are allowed to do whatever the fuck you want with each other. But when I _think_ about you guys being together, it’s like there’s just a little baby kitten inside of me that wants to explode and die in a million pieces and it’s just really sad and I just kind of want to cry over it.”

Drogo furrows his brows — in concern. He says, “Buddy . . .”

So much for being dead inside. He currently feels insecure and terrible. Grey shoves an entire chicken empanada into his mouth — and he immediately spits it back out into his hand because it is way fucking hot. He looks down at the yellow little pocket. Sad.

 

 

  
“Okay, here is what I think,” Drogo says, pointing to Grey with a now just-warm empanada. “I think you should spend more time with her. Just ask her out to coffee and see how it goes and how you feel. Because it’s been a long time, and you’re probably just going nuts because she gained weight and is getting hot again.”

“Okay, that’s not why,” Grey says, trying to interrupt, kind of offended that Drogo thinks he’s so superficial.

“It’s easy to fall into old patterns with people,” Drogo continues, biting off half of the empanada. “It’s easy to remember what it’s like to love people, and I’m sure that is addicting. But it’s been a few years — you guys are both very different now. Just try to get to know her as an actual real human being and not as, you know, an idealized figment you remember in your head.”

“I told her I didn’t want to be friends though,” Grey says, wincing. “I told her I had enough friends, and that I didn’t need another bitch in my face.”

“Wow, so that was impulsive and short-sighted of you. Good job,” Drogo says in appreciation. “And it’s okay to change your mind. People do it all the time. You’re allowed to change your mind.”

“It’s just going to be embarrassing to be like, ‘Oh, hey, guess what, JK! I’m so hilarious! I actually do want to see each other sometimes. Wanna drink a beverage together?’” He pauses. “What if she says no?”

“Oh, _okay,”_ Drogo says sarcastically. “So don’t do the adult thing because it’s embarrassing for you, and she might say no. You’ve got it all figured out, man. Why did you even ask me for advice?”

“Technically, I didn’t ask. Technically, you just started telling me what to do and what you thought about the whole thing.”

 

 

  
Drogo is trying not to speak out of turn — he’s not trying to put words into anyone’s mouth. He’s trying not to speculate because he does not want to fuck up anyone’s life with incorrect assumptions. But the general sense he gets is that these two assholes — he means Grey and Missandei — really miss each other. And Grey is too sad and too cowardly to do much about it because he is a little bitch.

This is a fairly recent realization. It’s only about an hour old. It basically happened when Grey confessed that it feels like he has a cat inside of his body. Drogo is honestly kind of flying by the seat of his pants on this, and his perspective on it changes from moment to moment.

He tells Grey that he didn’t have any sex with Missandei. He does this against his better judgement because Grey just looks so upset and Drogo honestly just wants to cheer his bud up. It is a really stupid and insulting-to-her way of cheering the guy up, though.

And he pretty much wants to slap Grey silly — at the way Grey completely and visibly relaxes at the admission. He wants to slap Grey because he is kind of offended. He wants to use some of Yara’s vernacular and tell Grey that he is being super sexist and isn’t very sex positive.

Out loud, Grey speculates that maybe he is just conditioned to always feel a lot of jealousy, when it comes to Drogo and Missandei. It’s probably just habit.

“Whatever, man,” Drogo says, breaking apart the last empanada and splitting it with Grey.

 

 

  
Drogo shows up to Dany’s place way late — and he wasn’t going to because of the hour, and he actually does not feel like having sex with her — but she assured him over text message that he does not need to have sex with her. She just wants to see him.

He was like, _what the fuuuuck?_  When he read that text message.

He is gun shy about telling people about his thing with Dany because, beyond that fact that she asked for his discretion, he also told his sister about it and Sona really stigmatized it for him. Sona has a degree in psychology and she fucking works in a corporation’s HR department and not as a mental health professional, but she manages to get a lot of mileage from the degree. Sona was ticked off and told him that he is in an abusive relationship and is acting out what he saw growing up with their parents. The woman he is seeing is using him and abusing him. He is their mother, just taking it because he does not think he deserves better. Sona told him that she has had her own difficulties in relationships because of their parents. She told him to face the facts: He is in a toxic and unhealthy relationship, and he is being abused, which is probably hard for him to see because he is a victim and also a man, and society tends to have a hard time viewing men as vulnerable to victimization like this.

He basically told Sona to, oh my God, shut her face hole.

Dany’s already in bed and asleep when he lets himself in. Great. He does not understand the point of this. He shrugs off his jacket and drapes it over her vanity chair. He unbuckles his belt, unzips his pants, and he drops it.

She stirs when the bed depresses, when he climbs in next to her.

She softly says, “Drogo?”

He says, “Oh, thank God, you said my name and not Grey’s.”

She doesn’t laugh. She just rolls over wraps her arm across him after he lies down. Her body feels slight and small next to his. He pushes some of her hair off her face — he’s trying to be more careful so that she doesn’t fucking flip out on him once again, for accidentally tugging out her fake hair.

“Why did you want me to come over?” he whispers. “You just wanted to cuddle?”

“Yeah,” she says sleepily. “And I haven’t seen you in a while.”

“You saw me over the weekend.”

“Oh,” she says, softly expelling a breath. “I forgot.”

“Babe, you’re losing your edge.”

 

 

  
Missandei is completely deaf and blind to Grey’s inner turmoil in regard to her. She actually lives her life and ends up befriending a few of her coworkers — they are exclusively middle-aged white, married dudes who are super nice to her and think she is really cool, young, and talented. They give her a lot of compliments because she is competent at her work. They keep telling her that she should do more than just be part-time at the radio station — she deserves a full-time slot! She generally laughs at how cute they are as she occasionally listens to their gripes about their children or the state of their drab marriages. It seems like pretty personal information, but they are just unloading on her, probably because they have not had access to a platonic female point of view in years. Sometimes they all go out to happy hour after work.

Work is going _great!_ She’s been trying really hard to let the small stuff go, to not get overly invested, and to not go around punching computer monitors and threatening to kill people!

While Grey is simultaneously procrastinating and trying to gather up the courage to send her a simple text message asking her if she’d be interested in getting together for some food or a drink, Missandei meets up with Yara and Drogo a few times. Yara tells Missy that she’s been dealing with her brother — he’s been really depressed because of his accident and they live together now — because Theon won’t get a fucking job, and Yara thinks it’s a really bad idea for Theon to be cooped up at home with their dad. So that’s why she had Theon move in with her. He and his depression are the biggest clit-blocks, so Yara’s sex life lately has been non-existent. But anyway, that’s why she’s been really busy and just a really terrible friend but a really great sister — the friend thing is something that she hopes to rectify. She’s been trying to be less controlling with Theon and letting him just do things at his own pace. Letting go of control of outcomes is a struggle that they all have, so Missandei can relate. It’s easy for her to forgive.

Grey still hasn’t reached out by the time that Gendry visits. Gendry gets a rental car and shows up at her doorstep. She jumps into his arms, and he tells her that she is definitely heavier now. She excitedly tells him about all of the things she wants to show him and have him eat while he is in King’s Landing.

He says to her, “Oh my God, you look and sound _so great._ You don’t even _know.”_

 

 

 


	11. Grey is great with the ladies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grey has no game. Drogo tries to help out a buddy and give him some. But Grey really does not have any game.

 

 

 

It’s easy for his heart to not seize up in pulsating throbs when she’s not in front of his face, which is probably why it was kind of easy for him not to think about her much in the second half of the five years in which she was not in his face. He has figured out that she is kind of like radioactive waste for him, with an initial half-life of about two years. His feelings for her diminish incrementally, wasting down to nearly nothing by the year five mark — until she shows up, reinfects him, and causes him to back-track, causes him to lose like, fucking three years of progress.

Generally for him, when she is out of sight, she is out of mind. Kind of. This is why it becomes easier and easier for him to lose his resolve on reaching out to her.

He has a done a lot of self-examination lately. The obvious conclusion he came to is, obviously, he’s a real chickenshit coward when it comes to his feelings. Probably because he’s had to contend with a lot of rejection — like, the general sort and also just straight up sexual, and emotional rejection. She was actually one of his rejectors. Perhaps the one that made the biggest impact.

The other conclusion he came to is that he never realized how much of their relationship in the past was driven by his hormones. He made the gestures he did because of his hormones. He kissed her for the first time because of hormones. He had sex with her for the first time because of hormones. He told her he loved her for the first time because of hormones. He also did the bulk of these things after she practically led him to water, after she practically spelled out that the outcome would be good if he kissed or, slept with her, or reciprocated and told her that he loved her. That’s how scared of rejection he is. He needs sure things and done deals.

It’s very different this time around. The hormones have really chilled the fuck out, so he’s like, pretty regular these days. Pretty even. The urge to get laid is not at all urgent anymore. Also, there are no overtures from her. She is respecting his wishes and is not offering up any interest. She is giving him just so much space. He didn’t realize how fucking vulnerable and scary it feels to be in this position.

And he’s not even trying to angle for a date. He just wants to have a conversation of substance with her, so that he can figure out if what he is feeling is real or if what he is feeling is lunacy.

He keeps putting it off. He starts negotiating with himself. He keeps keeping his ears open whenever he talks to Yara or Drogo, to scout potential outings that he can invite himself to, on the off-chance that Missandei might be there, too. He’s been to a bunch of pointless social gatherings as a result. He’s been to a party that was like, nearly all Dothraki, which wouldn’t have even been a thing if not for the fact that they all spoke Dothraki and he stood in a corner making small talk with someone’s uncle’s cousin. Drogo completely knows what Grey’s been trying to do, and Drogo has blessedly refrained from giving him shit for it — for now.

Drogo not-to-gently slaps him in the butt when he’s refilling his cup of coffee one morning. Drogo says, “Missandei’s friend is in town, and a few of us are all meeting up at a bar tonight to hang out and meet the guy. Do you want to come with, you fucking simple little bitch?

“Yes, please,” Grey says.

 

 

  
Grey spots Obara first, his biggest fan, and his instinct is to honestly avoid her and to duck, sort of. But then Yara spots him — shouts his name — and then enthusiastically waves him over. Great. She is already drunk. He’s late because of work.

They all shuffle seats around to make room for him. He wedges himself in between Yara and Drogo, sitting across from Missandei and her friend — who is super good-looking and really good at smiling. Grey cannot relax his own stupid fucking face — but he offers his hand anyway. He says, “Hey, man. I’m Grey.”

“Oh! _You’re_ Grey!” The guy laughs, shaking his hand. “They’ve been talking about you all night.”

Oh, great.

 

 

  
He gets massive cold feet about everything — about reaching out to her and about the value he could potentially add to her life as a friend — as the night progresses. He gets cold feet as he watches and listens to Missandei crack up as Gendry tells all of these stories about their adventures together over the years. There’s this story about this one time they were caught in a flood and instead of doing their jobs, they were really preoccupied with taking care of this dog that they thought was a stray, but actually belonged to a hysterical family who was missing their dog. Rather than be received as heroes for eventually matching the dog back with the owners, they were actually treated like dognappers — because that’s kind of what they were.

Gendry talks about how he regrets not being there when Missandei went full-on postal at work and ripped monitors off of stands and threatened to knife people left and right.

“Oh my God, is that the story now?” she says, eyes widening. “Is that what they’re saying about me? That’s a gross exaggeration.”

Grey gets cold feet because he starts telling himself that the rapport he had with Missandei was not special or unique. Look at how much she laughs around this good-looking guy. Look at all of their inside jokes, and how comfortable they are in each other’s personal space. Missandei probably has a million friends in Volantis. She probably does not need another friend to contend with, one that cannot dependably pump out more than six words per hour. He is such a fucking boring and simple bitch, just like how Drogo and Yara constantly say he is.

“Baby bear, do you want to split this pate?” Yara is asking because Grey loves anything that is meant to be smeared on bread — and she already had dinner and wants to eat for taste more than anything.

“Can we get the house pickles, too?” That’s probably the most he’s said all night.

“Uh, yeah, babe. Do you want the spiced nuts, too?” She pauses. “Oh dude, have you even eaten dinner yet?”

He actually hasn’t. He actually forgot to. He admits, “No.”

“Oh, you idiot! Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do! We’re still gonna get the pate and the pickles, but let’s nix the nuts and add on the short rib instead. That’s just for you, but I wanna bite. You need calories. You need fat and protein.”

Her hand touches him underneath the table, out of sight from everyone else. She digs her fingers into his stomach and wiggles them. He still has a lot of residual self-consciousness about his body, which will probably be a thing about him until he dies — thus he hates being touched casually and intimately like this because it always feels so mocking — thus these assholes are always trying to tickle him in public. He spasms and accidentally slams his knee up into the underside of the table, just scaring the shit out of Obara, Missandei, and Gendry — as Yara and Drogo each chuckle beside him. He feels embarrassed over it — he reaches his arms out and hovers his hands over the drinks. He says, “I’m so sorry!”

 

 

  
Drogo likes how, after providing Grey with ample opportunity to chat it up with Missandei, Grey is just squandering it by being the biggest dillweed. Drogo has been starting conversations — he’s been setting it up for Grey. For instance, he tells everyone that Grey has been working on a new series of portraits and interestingly enough — Missandei has been taking a lot of portraits, too. This causes Missy to look at Grey and be like, “Oh, really?”

And then Grey responds by saying, “No.” And then saying, “Well, yes.” And then saying, “Well, kind of. They’re not exactly portraits though.” And then saying, “They’re just pictures of people.” And then Grey shuts his mouth and says _nothing else._ This guy is the fucking absolute _worst._

Then Yara — who just intuits shit like a fucking genius — asks Missandei, “You’ve been taking pictures? That’s awesome. What of?”

And then Missandei says, “Oh, it’s just like, it’s just like — it’s not a big deal. I just like, point my camera and hope for the best. Like, I know I’m not a professional.”

This makes Drogo remember that Missandei is kind of a real idiot, too. He is honestly starting to wonder how these two dorks ever got out of their own heads long enough to smash.

 

 

  
He is unable to talk with Missandei because he feels so self-conscious with the audience around them — and so he just resorts to eating and drinking. That way, there’s always shit in his mouth and he doesn’t have to bear the burden of actually being interesting and entertaining.

He just feels so nervous and so anxious. She looks really nice. Really pretty. That makes him feel kind of panicked. He feels really put on the spot, and he feels underprepared. He is the sort of person that really likes preparation, so feeling underprepared is really stressful.

The bar gets louder the later it gets. The distance between him and Missandei increases when her friend Ygritte shows up with her sister-in-law. Grey met her once with Yara, but he assumes that Arya does not remember him, so he reintroduces himself and he says, “Hey, I’m Grey.”

And she gives him a funny look and in front of everyone, is like, “Yeah, I know, dude. We’ve met before.”

And he just wants to fucking crawl into a fucking hole and die.

 

 

  
A lot of fun stories get hashed out about the past, once all the ladies get back together. They apparently haven’t been together like this in a long time, so it’s special to them. They laugh a lot over random college stuff. They laugh over early career stuff. They laugh at Ygritte’s pregnancy even though that doesn’t seem like it’s a funny thing. And then they start laughing at and mocking old exes.

“Oh, oops!” Ygritte says to him. “Sorry.”

He doesn’t know what she’s sorry for. She hasn’t even said anything bad about him. Yet.

“Oh my God, do you remember when we thought he was your future rapist!” Ygritte shouts, cracking up.

“And yet you let me go home with him anyway,” Missandei says sardonically, raising her glass momentarily to Grey, kind of winking at him. He just about points to himself and just about asks, who me?

“Yo, babes, what about the part where you were like, ‘Oh, he’s Drogo’s friend, so he must be a rapist’?” Drogo interjects. “Like, when do I get an apology for the assumptions y’all made about me and who I associate with?”

“Oh my gosh,” Ygritte says, ignoring Drogo, straightening in her seat. “You gave her money!”

Grey actually says, “Me? Are you talking to me?”

“Yes, you!” Ygritte starts laughing, showing all of her teeth, turning a little pink. “Oh my gosh, I thought it was drugs because _what else_ was I supposed to think? I was like, ‘Missandei, I love you, girl. But you need to keep your downward spiral away from my children.’ How did you know it wasn’t for drugs?”

All eyes turn on him — and again, he feels put on the spot. He is not entirely sure how to answer this question. Because maybe he was really stupid for just giving her money. Maybe he gave her money because of how he felt about her and because of the memory of her. Maybe he’s just a real fucking idiot.

He says, “She told me it wasn’t for drugs.”

“And you believed her?”

“Well, yeah,” he says. He stops himself from pointing out that it was the truth. She really wasn’t on drugs. She really needed to get a car out of an impound lot. There are a bunch of people who can corroborate this story, at this point.

 

 

  
Missandei is a little tipsy when Gendry pulls her aside and looks at her — very seriously. And then he momentarily cracks up laughing when he sees that she is a little drunk. He clears his throat, and he adopts some semblance of decorum again. He stoops down a little to get an even look at her face and he says, “Hey, so here’s what’s up. I really think your friend is really feeling me, so we’re gonna ditch you guys in a bit. Is that okay? Will you get home okay?”

This is a courtesy ask because he’s pretty sure that she will not be stranded if he takes his rental car elsewhere. He’s pretty sure she has plenty of people watching out for her. He was completely right about how she just needed to be home with friends and family. He was completely right about a lot of things. He is kind of brilliant.

“You’re leaving?” she says. “When do you think you’ll be home? I didn’t think to make a spare key for you.”

“Missy,” he says, talking really slowly so she will understand. “I might not come back to your place. But if I do, I’ll just call you and wake you up or whatever. Or I’ll crash somewhere. I’ll figure it out. Don’t worry.”

 

 

  
Gendry lightly jostles Drogo’s shoulder right before he takes off with Arya. To Drogo, Gendry says, “You’ll make sure she gets home okay, right?”

Drogo snickers. He gestures at Grey before he says, “Yeah, man. Me and my rapist friend have _got this.”_

Gendry points at Drogo. With a straight face, Gendry says, “Never believe the hype.”

Drogo points at Gendry. He says, “Never give up.”

And Grey is just sitting there going, _what the fuck?_ When in the fucking course of the night did these two become familiar with one another enough to have this esoteric and cool send off with each other? How come Drogo met a guy and after _five minutes,_ they have all of this cool shit together? How come Grey was actually _inside_ of Missandei at certain points in their lives — but now he cannot even ask her if she still enjoys hot, bitter beverages?

 

 

  
At the end of the night, Yara offers to drive Missandei home so that Drogo does not have to make two stops, but Drogo shoots her some vibes through his eyes. He shoots her something like, _bitch, what are you doing?_

And she gets it. Because Yara is a fucking _angel_ that fell from the heavens, down to Earth. She says to Missandei, “Oh shit, just kidding. I have to get gas and —” she blows a raspberry, “— my brother wants me to buy him some ice cream because he’s PMSing, so yeah. Just let Drogo drive you home.”

Missandei scrunches up her nose. She says, “Okay?”

 

 

  
While Grey really appreciates Drogo’s enthusiasm and Drogo’s support — there is just _so much_ fucking pressure, and he just feels himself crumbling under the weight of Drogo’s expectations. There is just no opportunity for him to quietly remind Drogo that he’s not fucking cool and calm and smooth and casually sexual like Drogo is. He is fucking weird and tense and uptight and awkward and he makes women fear for their safety when they are around him — kind of.

Like, Drogo shoves Missandei into the backseat with Grey, even though she called shotgun. Drogo did it under the auspices of her not vomiting in his front seat. But apparently it’s okay in the back. She’s too lit to really follow all of this crazy logic. She just grasps the headrest and lightly touches Drogo’s shoulder. She says, “I’m not gonna barf, though. Not even close to it.”

Drogo turns up the volume on his stereo, so that it’s loud enough that the drive isn’t awkwardly silent, but also so it’s not too loud that it would drown out a conversation.

There is no conversation happening in the backseat.

At least, not until Missandei randomly says, “Drogo, this is going to sound weird. But I really love the songs about asses mix that you made for me. Can you put more songs on it?”

He says, “Yeah, babe. I can do that for you,” as he tries to make eye contact with Grey through his rearview mirror.

 

 

  
They insist on walking her to her door, just to make sure she gets there in one piece. She lets them because she’s too drunk to fight them off. She giggles hysterically at that — she says, “Wow, that sounded super assault-y.” She grabs ahold of Drogo’s arm. She says, “Man, rape culture is so like, _nuts.”_

Drogo is like, really amused by her. He is really charmed. This is the woman he misses a lot. This is one of his best friends. He touches her cheek briefly, just skimming his knuckles over her soft skin, as he looks into her face.

And then she spontaneously hugs him. She throws her arms around him, nearly smacking Grey in the face — Grey actually has to take a step back to avoid being caught in the crossfire of her affection. And she squeezes tightly, hanging onto Drogo as he picks her up and squeezes her back. He’s smiling, and she is giggling. She is giddily saying, “I’ve missed this! I have missed _you!_ I have missed the fun we used to have! I miss the conversations! Tonight was so great! Thank you for coming out and for being so friendly and cool with Gendry! You made him feel very comfortable and accepted. You are so good at that! I really appreciated that! I love you, Drogo!”

He kisses her on the cheek, giving her another squeeze that is probably painful and hard to breathe through. She still doesn’t weigh enough, but it’s okay. She’s on her way. He bounces her a little bit before setting her down. He says, “I love you, too. I’ve missed you a lot, too.”

 

 

  
The lovefest comes to a bit of a dead stop when they realize that he is like, still just awkwardly there — just ruining everything with his presence. Missandei kind of notices him again with a start — her eyes widen and she’s like, “Oh!” about it. Then she says, “And you!”

He nods. Because this is really great.

“Thanks for coming out, too. It was really cool to see you.”

He can tell she is just fucking struggling to muster up more of the same kind of energy she had with Drogo. He says, “Yeah, no problem.”

“Okay, bye!”

 

 

  
“Grey,” Drogo says when they are back in the car. Drogo is sighing. “Buddy.”

“I _knowww,”_ Grey says, orienting his face up to the ceiling of the car. “I know it was a trainwreck.”

“I was busting my ass all night for you!”

“I know!” Grey says, his voice cracking from the stress. “You are kind of the best hype-man-slash-wing-man I have ever seen. I don’t deserve you!”

“What _happened?”_

“I don’t know!” Grey says, whining. “I just got so scared and so shy whenever she looked at me because she’s so pretty and she smells so good, and I hate it. I really _hate_ it. I hate myself!” He’s covering his face and he’s sinking down into a major slouch.

“Grey,” Drogo says.

“What?”

“Buddy, I think you are on the fucking train again. I think you need to stop deluding yourself with this just wanna be friends shit. You are back on the Missandei Express.”

_“Nooo.”_

 

 

 

 

 


	12. OMG is Grey okay?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grey gets hit with a stomach bug. Drogo is super worried about his boy and runs to boy's rescue. Missy gets a job offer she cannot refuse.

 

 

  
Grey generally denies that Drogo is right, because the way that Drogo thinks is too nice and pat sometimes. How Grey feels is never as simple as being in love with a woman and then being willfully stagnant and inactive about it because he is scared of putting himself out there. That’s only like, half of it.

Relationships are especially hard for people like him — he knows this because she taught him this — and he thinks about this as he grabs his luggage from baggage claim and goes outside into the sweltering heat of Ebonhead to flag down a taxi. He’s going to be staying here for a few weeks. It’s easy to do this — it does not make his heart hurt to be apart from someone — because he is unattached. Heartache is not a distraction from his work here. And that is something that he has learned about himself — he is not a person who is inspired by yearning and by depression. He becomes really useless and has a hard time keeping productive when he is depressed.

He is prone to obsession and monomania. That’s probably why he is so good at what he does — his fixation makes him so good. He cannot be obsessed about two entities. He cannot be obsessed about his work at the same time he is obsessed about a person. When he obsessed about a person, he gives up on his work. He knows this because she taught him this.

Sweat rolls down his forehead — his shirt is already drenched because he has gone temperature-soft in the long decades that he has not lived here — and he touches the barrel of his lens, feeling for how warm it is. Then he pulls a spare shirt over it to block out the heat. He settles in his seat and peers out the window at the passing scenery of home. He thinks that this would be very hard for him to give up.

 

 

  
Missandei pretty much gets ditched. The itinerary she made for Gendry largely goes unused — they never see an exhibit, never to go any parks, and never do any wine tasting. Gendry becomes super mired in his infatuation with Arya and spends nearly all of his short visit to King’s Landing with her.

Missandei ends up doing a lot of the sightseeing by herself. After all, she already requested the days off from work, and it’s not like she has anything else to do. She finds that the food tour is great in terms of historical tidbits, if a bit stingy in terms of actual sustenance. She finds that wine tasting is less fun by herself because there’s no one to trade notes with and it’s a little weird to get a little buzzed in the middle of the afternoon by herself.

She visits the gallery that is currently displaying Grey’s work along with the work of two others. She meant to take Gendry here, too, because she has talked a lot about Grey with Gendry over the years and she supposes that seeing his work might contextualize some of the things she has shared about him.

The square footage is small enough for her to walk through in a few minutes, but she ends up staying there for a couple of hours.

 

 

  
She never really gets any alone time with Gendry during his visit. On his last night, they all meet up for dinner — Missandei, Yara, Drogo, Arya, and him. Gendry and Arya are kind of like, giddy and happy-looking, not really something Missandei would really begrudge them for, but when they are asked what happens now — Arya lives in Westeros and he is on an entirely different continent — they say that they will figure it out. They’re gonna try to do the long distance thing for a bit and see where it all goes.

Into the ground. Into the dark and dirty ground is where that will go.

Or at least, that’s what Missandei wants to say to them. But she does not want to spoil their happiness with something as unfun as a reality check.

Drogo has been vaguely distracted all night. His phone is like, glued to his hand, and it constantly glows because he keeps turning it on. It’s hard not to notice his divided attention, and Yara is the first to remark on it. She says, “He’s probably still sleeping.”

“I’m waiting for him to wake up,” Drogo says, voice low and exasperated.

“What’s going on?” Arya asks.

“Grey hasn’t called him in a few days,” Yara explains, speaking for Drogo. “Grey’s phone been going straight to voicemail. And D’s being a bit of a hysterical wife over it.” To Drogo, Yara says, “You know he does this, right? You know he is terrible with correspondence. This is like, the number one thing we hate about him, remember?” She nudges Drogo. “He’s fine, man.”

This makes Missy remember the time that Grey was in Qohor, filming those tigers. And how there were times when she worried that he probably died because he scratched himself and got an infection — and she wouldn’t even know about it until he was already long gone, because of the distance, the conditions, the clunky lack of communication.

This memory makes her reach her arm out to lay her hand on Drogo’s forearm. She squeezes it.

 

 

  
Gendry gives her a big hug goodbye. He tells her that he loves knowing where she comes from, and where she comes from is so nice. He tells her that this is where she is meant to be — with this surety that she does not feel herself. But she kisses him on the cheek, and she tells him to come visit again soon — which she knows he will. She knows how this initially unfolds and how it lays out. He will visit soon because of Arya. They will be happy together until they are not.

 

 

  
He gets sick during his first week in Ebonhead — which is a bit of a freak occurrence because he typically travels very well these days. But a combination of sleep deprivation, heat exhaustion, and different flora and fauna get to him. He gets a stomach bug and starts having painful contractions in his stomach as gross liquid waste just starts leaking out of him. He cannot stray very far from a toilet for long. He just keeps testing his own limits and trying to get up to work, only to get struck with a wave of sickness and retreat back into his rental.

His bed is a mattress on the ground, and he lies down, sweats, and has these delirious half-awake dreams. He dreams of his life — of his childhood, of his parents, of his aloneness, of his friends, and also of his relationship with her.

He’s occasionally interrupted by the housekeeper — there is a language barrier — but he can tell that she is concerned and probably scared that he’s going to die on her watch and she’s going to be blamed for his death — so she starts bringing him soup. She also makes him drink hot cow’s milk even though he is pretty sure that fucking dairy is the last thing he wants. But there’s a cultural barrier on top of the language barrier — he’s so tired and so weak, so he decides to just say fuck it. Maybe this old wives’ tale is right and he is being a fucking Western toolbag. He starts drinking the milk. It is raw, unpasteurized milk.

As predicted, the diarrhea worsens because of the new bugs he has introduced into his already weakened system. With the heat and the ineffectiveness of the air conditioning unit, he becomes dangerously dehydrated. When she is around, the housekeeper tries to force water down his throat. He is scared of where this water is coming from — which is actually from a bottle — but he is kind of irrational and getting a little nutty, so he refuses to drink her poison water because he already made a mistake by drinking the milk she gave him. His head is throbbing. His heart is pounding. And he is aware that he is pretty fucked. He’s had a lot of first aid and emergency training over the years, so he can tell that he’s in a fair bit of trouble.

So he decides to call for a car, as the housekeeper freaks out. She probably wants him to go to the hospital. He does not know how to tell her — uh yeah — he’s working on it. He charges his phone enough to call a car, as she drapes his blanket on his shoulders. And he throws it off because he’s fucking so hot and sweaty, so the last thing he needs is a blanket. She is still freaking out, and he cannot speak enough of the same language, so he cannot tell her that her investment in him is very sweet, but she is kind of sabotaging his efforts at staying alive. He gets it though. He gets that she is trying to help.

He grabs his phone and holds it tightly in his hand as a bunch of strange hands start handling him. The housekeeper and the taxi driver settle him in the back seat of the car — she’s talking in rapidfire Summer Tongue, probably telling the taxi driver to take him to the hospital, really fast.

 

 

  
The taxi driver is pretty torn and conflicted by the time he gets Grey to the hospital. Like, the taxi driver does not want to take responsibility for this sick, foreign man in the backseat of his car, but there’s also this thread of humanity that prevents him for just unloading Grey’s body onto the sidewalk and just driving off to find his next patron.

The driver pulls Grey’s arm over his shoulders and then gingerly helps him get to his feet. Grey is very sweaty and very wet and it is kind of gross, but they slowly make their way to the admittance desk. The driver leaves his car in the wrong parking space, gets a ticket for it, and he also does not manage to collect cab fare because Grey is so out of it. The driver chucks it up to karma. He is accumulating good karma for doing a good deed.

 

 

  
It takes Grey a while — probably an entire day of woozily bugging various hospital staff — to get access to a proper charging cord for his phone. When he gets it and starts juicing up his phone, Grey waffles on whether or not to call Drogo to let Drogo know that he’s in the hospital but everything is totally fine. He doesn’t want Drogo to get distracted because Drogo always carries the weight at work for the both of them when Grey is away doing this stupid bullshit.

But he does end up calling Drogo after he gets his phone up to ten percent — days have probably passed and he was delirious for some of it — so he’s not quite sure how long it’s been since he has checked in. Drogo is probably freaking out. He decides to reach out to Drogo because he honestly knows that Drogo would want to know. He knows that Drogo cares too much about him.

Drogo is actually initially pissed when he calls. Because Grey’s been incommunicado for nearly a week — this fact actually shocks Grey. He thought it was like, three days max. Drogo starts chewing him out over the phone about how inconsiderate and selfish Grey is sometimes — until Grey hoarsely tells Drogo he’s in the hospital. Then Drogo shuts up at that.

 

 

  
Drogo tells her that Grey is in the hospital — he got sick. The statement is entirely alarming and really vague — her mouth opens in surprise and she starts blinking rapidly. She’s fucking _already_ crying again. She whispers, “Is he okay?”

Drogo does not even have _time_ for Missandei to have an emotion about this. He has been on the phone all morning, trying to secure an emergency visa so that he will be let into the Summer Isles. He doesn’t even have time for her to catch up.

Drogo mutters, “He’s fine,” as his actions belie his words. He’s frantically rushing around his bedroom, grabbing clothes and devices — his computer and tablet. As he packs, shoving shit into a suitcase, Drogo asks Missandei for a favor. He tells her it’s gonna be a shitshow — for both him and Grey to be out of office in the midst of this fucking shitshow of their fucking lives. He tells her that there are a lot of deadlines coming up hard and fast in the next week, and being down the two leads is a real drag. Osha is about to go on maternity leave, and he cannot fucking ask that woman to delay that because she is about to pop and have a fucking baby in their conference room. Drogo asks Missandei if she can be in office and just help move things along and make sure things get out the door. He tells her that their project manager is pretty good, but the PM is also pretty young. It would just be good to have someone of her expertise and experience there.

She hesitates. With embarrassment — because she feels like she wants to say no — she tells Drogo that she has no concept or idea of the kind of work they are doing. She would probably be more of a hindrance than an asset. She is going to fuck up everything that they worked so hard for. She starts suggesting other names — like maybe Sandor is not busy. Maybe Yara is not busy. Maybe Tyrion. Maybe even Jaime. Like, the stories about her mental breakdown are actually not that exaggerated. Does he want to hand over his business to a fucking crazy person?

“Babe,” Drogo says raggedly, picking up his phone. “If you’re not up for it, just say so. I can call some other people.”

She sighs. She thinks about it as fast as she can. She’s still unsure and really freaked out. She viciously whispers, _“Fuck!”_ to herself more than to him. And then she says, “Okay, so what do I need to know?”

Drogo’s shoulders slump. He’s still on his phone. He says, “I’m gonna share some sheets with you. I’m going to email Ernie — he’s kind of our IT guy — and tell him to create an account for you and to give you access to our servers. He’ll also set up a workstation for you. Oh my God, thank you. I’m gonna email the team and let them know that everything has to pass through you, in the time that Grey, Osha, and I are out of office. And we’re gonna pay you for the work — of course.”

“Oh, you don’t have to pay me,” she blurts.

Drogo is too frazzled — too panicked and worried about Grey — for her to get much more information out of him.

 

 

  
She rides with him to the airport so that she can drive his car home. He insists that she take it for a few days so that she can get around more easily — their office has dedicated parking — and also, this way he doesn’t have to leave his car at the airport lot.

She has to eavesdrop because the space in the car is small, as Drogo calls Dany to tell her what is going. It’s entirely miserable, to listen to Drogo’s soft voice tell Dany that Grey is in the hospital in Ebonhead — he’s not entirely sure what is going on — but Grey is fine for now. It’s entirely shitty, to listen to Drogo pause before saying, “Dany, he’s going to be okay, I promise you. You don’t have to drop everything to come. He wouldn’t want you to. He knows you’re busy. I’ll take care of him.” There is another pause — presumably as Dany talks — before he says, “Yeah, I dunno. These things happen sometimes.” And then, before he hangs up, he kind of laughs softly at something Dany says. He goes, “Yeah, yeah, I know. He’s like that. Okay, I’ll tell him you said that. I’ll talk to you later. Bye.” And then Drogo ends the call.

She catches Drogo attention before he exits the car. She says, “Will you _please_ give me updates on how he is? Will you _please_ tell me what happened to him when things calm down a little more?”

 

 

 

 


	13. Drogo and Grey are on vacation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While Drogo and Grey are off gallivanting around Ebonhead, Missandei holds it down at home and keeps Drogo and Grey's business afloat like the champ she is.

 

 

 

 

When Drogo shows up at the hospital, Grey tries to make a joke. He tries to say something like, “Oh shit, overreact much?” but his brain is pretty garbage and disoriented still, so he only gets as far as “Oh, shit.”

Through a translator, the words “kidney failure” comes up — and Drogo just looks so worried and so pissed over that. He looks at Grey accusingly, and Grey wants to be like, oh, like I wanted to give myself kidney failure!

But mostly, he says nothing. He just looks kind of guilty and kind of contrite. Grey tells his doctor through the translator that he understands that it was kidney failure brought on by severe dehydration, and it’s pretty reversible, so no harm no foul. He kind of looks at the IV pumping fluids into his body as the doctor tells him that he’s going to be fine.

When they are alone again, Drogo smears his hands over his face. He sighs through his hands.

Grey says, “I’m sorry for scaring you.”

Drogo says, “When you get discharged and get out of here — we’re gonna make some _lifestyle_ changes, you get me? No more fifteen-hour days. No more seven-day work weeks. We’re going to _hire_ some more _people._ And you’re gonna never fucking have access to a project management tool ever again.”

“Drogo, I’m not sure me eating something weird and getting a severe case of diarrhea is reason for you to fucking go nuts with everything.”

“Are you _seriously_ arguing for fifteen-hour work days!” Drogo shouts, loud enough for a nurse to curiously pop her head into the room for a moment, before deciding that nothing is amiss and moving on.

“No man!” Grey says defensively, once their audience is gone. “Of course we can stand to work less! I’m just saying!”

 

 

  
He’s all dizzy and woozy and weak still, so he generally sits around looking all frail and useless as Drogo deals with the hospital bill. Drogo is pocketing his wallet as he walks back up to Grey, this look of consternation on his face.

“Oh, shit,” Grey says. “What’s the damage?”

“Not that much, actually,” Drogo mutters. “It was surprisingly affordable. Holy shit, we are paying too much for people’s health insurance at home.”

 

 

  
Once Grey is released from the hospital into Drogo’s care, he has so many priorities he wants to hit. First, he's kind of ravenous because he hasn't eaten anything of substance in days. The doctor told him to take it easy and to baby his stomach with liquids, white starches, bananas, and maybe skinless chicken breast for a few days.

That sounds pretty disgusting and unpleasant, so he bitches and whines and moans and pretty much annoys Drogo into letting them go to a chicken noodle soup restaurant. He tells Drogo it has all of the ingredients of intestinal success. It has the chicken, rice noodles, and liquid broth.

Drogo is so annoyed as he watches Grey dose his noodle soup with a few spoonfuls of chili sauce. Drogo shakes his head and quickly slaps Grey's hand when it reaches out to grab at fresh herbs and greens to supplement his soup with. The veggies are damp with water, having been freshly washed.

Drogo says, “Do you have a fucking death wish?” as he hypocritically loads his own bowl with the veggies.

“Man, what are the chances I'm gonna get food poisoning twice in a row?”

“Man! Probably more common than you think, idiot!”

 

 

  
Grey’s rental house is really spotless by the time they get back to it — his housekeeper is nowhere to be found, but everything smells lemony and is shiny — so shiny that Grey almost slips walking up the tile staircase in his socks — a mistake that earns him another tongue-lashing from Drogo, shouting at him to fucking be more careful or else he’s going to crack his retarded head open. He knows that Drogo yells at him because Drogo loves him, so Grey puts up with the verbal abuse.

He’s running upstairs to the toilet. He gets there way ahead of Drogo and slams the door shut, not bothering to lock it. He pulls down his pants and plops down, holding onto his stomach, groaning. Oh great.

“How is it?” Drogo disembodied voice calls out, entirely way too close for comfort.

“Ah, still hot. Still soft. Not pure liquid though, so yay for small favors.”

“You fucking moron. No, this is my fault. I knew I shouldn’t have let you eat that soup.”

 

 

  
Grey collapses down on his mattress pad as Drogo cracks open a two-liter bottle of water. He hands it over to Grey who eagerly and obediently starts sucking it down. He then blindly reaches out and drags his laptop onto his lap.

Drogo says, “What are you _doing?”_ all dangerously, with barely contained anger, as he peels a banana with his just-washed and sanitized hands. He starts breaking the banana into small pieces and he hands them over, bit by bit, to Grey, who shoves them into his mouth and absently starts chewing as he stares at his computer screen. Drogo thinks that Grey is working — that Grey has the impudence to start working right in front of Drogo’s face right after Drogo gave him a billion speeches about how they need to start being way better at work-life balance.

“I’m looking up flights, man,” Grey says. “And then after, I’m gonna email Xaros and tell him that I need to push out and rebook this trip to later in the year.”

“Why?”

“Uh, ‘cause we gotta get home. We can’t both be gone, and I’m honestly just not up for carting my own ass around the country in this current state.”

“Oh,” Drogo says, feeling his irritation dissipate, because Grey is being reasonable now. “Actually, don’t book your return ticket yet. I bought us a few, so I can help cart your ass around and we can see how you feel in a couple days.”

“You bought us a few?”

Drogo suddenly grins — like a cat that ate a fat bird. “I called in a ringer, bro.”

 

 

  
Her colleagues at the radio station are really, really cool with her moonlighting and pulling double-duty at another workplace. They are really cool with her doing only about fourteen hours — two days — two night shifts, more accurately. She supposes that they are cool because she offered to take night shift on the weekend, which is a pretty inconvenient shift.

She’s totally psyched out. She’s totally scared and totaly nervous and really anxious about covering for Grey and Drogo. Because it’s one thing to fuck around on some stranger’s production, but it’s an entirely different thing to muck about with her friends’ baby. She just doesn’t want to make anyone regret anything, so she just shows up on Monday with the resolve to not make anything worse. She shows up hoping to just not be an obstacle and to help keep things moving along.

All of the people who know her are not currently in office, so she actually shows up with a box of donuts and a very amenable attitude, and watches as a bunch of them start sizing her up.

She remembers Pyp, the kid who delivered Grey’s cash to her at the impound lot. She actually hopes that this shared past of theirs would like, endear her to him a little bit, but Pyp is _high strung_ and gets shouted at on a daily basis, so he does not want to fuck up while his bosses are gone. He does not want his fate to be in the hands of a drug addict just because his boss used to bang her.

Thus, Pyp starts power tripping a little bit. He ignores her and shuts her out when she asks him for a rundown of projects. He thinks that he does not even have _time_ to be babysitting right now.

Missandei says, “Oh!” when she realizes that he does not intend to give her a rundown at all. “You’re really busy. I get it. I’ll poke around myself for a little bit this morning. Maybe we can meet this afternoon when things calm down some?”

Pyp is sure this lady is going to ruin his life. He cannot even hide his disdain.

 

 

  
Missandei knows that most of the office is wary of her. Yoren, an art director, is the only one who is friendly to her. It’s possible it’s because he’s the oldest person in the office. The rest are young twenty-somethings. She probably seems ancient to them.

The nerves persist for nearly the entire first day. She actually is afraid to like, talk to Pyp because he looks like he’s trying not to roll his eyes at her with _every_ strained conversation they have. When she asks him questions about their work flow that she thinks are totally reasonable, he explains it back to her really slowly, like she is an idiot. She realizes that she is not even sure when the fuck Drogo is coming back — it never occurred to her to ask him because she was so preoccupied with Grey. Speaking of which, she has not gotten the status update that she was promised on that guy — but she assumes that they are both fine.

She catches a mistake on a suite of packaged media files toward the end of the day. The color profile is wrong so images won’t print accurately. It’s an oversight mistake — just a mistake because things are moving fast. Yoren didn’t catch it — and this surprises her. The designers are about to send it off to the printer without her sign off — because they aren’t following Drogo’s email and they see her as a bottleneck — when she walks up to their desks and she asks them to stop.

 

 

  
They try to argue with her initially — again, talking to her like she is slow — but she bypasses the explanation, tells them to shut the fuck up for a second, as she makes Meera pull up the file on her computer screen and go through print production settings. And then she makes Meera print out a sample. And then Meera says, “Oh, crap.”

“Okay,” Missy says. “It’s fine. We caught it. But if we didn’t, it would’ve cost thousands to reprint, and we would’ve eaten the cost and lost time and would’ve had to tell the client that this got delayed because we fucked up — because you guys rushed and didn’t double check each other’s work. So I am asking you again,” and here she is talking directly to Pyp, “what the hell is the workflow here? Can someone _please_ walk me through process?”

 

 

  
It takes some time — they all stay about an hour later than usual in order to walk Missandei through everything — but they detail out their project lists, their schedules, meetings over the course of the week, their project management tools, their email lists, all of it.

She bites her lip through some of it — because some of it — so much of it — just screams him. So much of it is stuff he created, how he likes to work, how he likes to document, how he likes things to run. There are parts of it that ring out Drogo, too — but Drogo was never such a slave to procedure, so most of it is Grey.

She can tell that the staff, being relatively young, don’t have the experience or the foresight to understand why their boss is so anal retentive and requires so much documentation and procedure. She can tell because they talk about some of the procedure with a bit of weariness, though they do admit that they fucked up a little bit today because they skipped over some procedure.

“Okay okay okay,” she says, thinking. They are slammed for the next month. “Okay, so everything that bills under ten thousand, I don’t need final approval. Just have two touch points, and then final goes to Yoren. Also, no creative will push things out the door. Pyp pushes all files, and he will cc the lead designer or videographer and Yoren. Everything high-billing needs my eyes on it — sorry guys. I know it will slow you down, but that’s just the way it’s gonna go. Pyp, can you update my calendar with all high-billing meetings?”

“Like, for how long? This week? The next two weeks?” He’s asking her how long she’s gonna be here.

“Ah, this week. Let’s play it week by week. And please schedule a team meeting on Friday at nine in the morning.”

“We never have team meetings before ten, though.”

She frowns. “So you just dick around for the one and a half, two hours before team meetings?” she asks.

“Well, Drogo —”

“Come in at eight thirty, dick around for half an hour, then we’ll have a team meeting at nine. And then y’all can dick around a little bit after the meeting, if that makes you feel better.”

 

 

  
Drogo dips way below his pay grade and becomes Grey’s number two. He sets up equipment, checks settings, writes down notes, runs a second camera sometimes, and he also ensures that Grey continues to drink a lot of fluids and eat a lot of potassium-rich bananas. Grey gives him regular poop updates, and by the third day, Grey feels good enough to leave the house for eight entire hours. He feels like he can hold in his waste reliably.

The whole thing is so low-pressure for both of them — so easy and lackadaisical and _fun._ It is so _fucking fun_ to run around Ebonhead, capturing images and video of people — trying to have conversations with people in hand gestures and Grey’s broken Summer Tongue. Grey’s enthusiasm for this city and this country comes out as manic factoids. Grey tells Drogo about the tribes that inhabited the island before colonization and how they can still see cultural vestiges of these people — even after colonization imprinted and touched everything. Grey rambles on about the resilience of people, about people’s ability to survive and sustain and adapt to continue on living. He tells Drogo that it is so amazing — it is so fucking amazing and humbling. He talks about how his heart breaks for this place and how hot it is here all the time.

To Drogo — being here with Grey like this — it feels new and it also feels old. They actually filmed an episode of the show in the Summer Isles — very early on in the second season. Grey says that they had gotten it all wrong — back then he was too young to have known that they were getting it all wrong. Drogo speculates that right now, he supposes that Grey is trying to get it right. It sounds entirely too neat and poetic, so Grey naturally rejects those words. Grey shrugs it off and he says, “I just try and take pictures, and sometimes it works out.”

 

 

  
Grey tells Drogo that he really wants a fucking update — but also, he kind of does not even want to fucking know what is going on at home.

Drogo is holding his phone up to his face — he’s reading his emails — and he says, “Okay, you want to know? You want to really know?”

Grey grabs his head — he grabs his ears. He says, “Ahh, no! Yes! Agh! Do I want to know?”

“Man, they fucking _love her.”_ Drogo is laughing loudly. “Like, these emails are totally normal and not at all panicked. Shit is still getting done, man!”

“Oh my God,” Grey says.

 

 

  
It’s always easier for him to be honest in the dark, perhaps because he doesn’t have to look into anyone’s face as he tells them his truth. They have been sharing the same mattress pad for a week now, even though the housekeeper offered to run out and procure another pad. They tried to mime and tell her her that it’s no big deal. They don’t mind sleeping together.

In the dark, Grey asks Drogo if Drogo remembers the first time they bunked down together.

“New Ghis,” Drogo murmurs.

“I was so pissed because you were really inconsiderate and kept infringing on my personal space and never respected my privacy. I remember the first day, and how you jimmied the bathroom lock while I was showering just because you couldn’t wait to use the toilet.”

“It was the first time I saw you completely naked.”

“Okay, that is kind of a weird detail to flesh out — but yes, that was the first time you walked in on me while I was naked.”

“The first time of many.”

Grey laughs out loud. “Would you _stop!_ I’m trying to get somewhere here.”

“Where you tryin’ to go, man?” Drogo says softly.

Grey shakes his head, looking up at the dark ceiling. “You never listen to me. You never just do what I ask you to do.”

“Okay.”

“And I’m better for it. You are always pushing me outside of my comfort zone. You are always forcing me to do what I never think I can do. And you always make sure I never fail. My work is what it is because of you. I love you, man. I know I’m grumpy and I resent you for pushing sometimes — but I’m also so grateful for you.”

“Well, fuck,” Drogo whispers, his breathing audible.

“It’s me — and it’s you, man. The ladies — they will come, and they will go. But at the end of it all, it’s still me and you.”

Drogo chuckles. “Ah, yes. The ladies.”

 

 

 

 

 


	14. Missy is a hot commodity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The guys return from the Summer Isles and start throwing their money around. Missandei benefits. Kind of?

 

 

 

  
Grey and Drogo are gone for a lot longer than she expected. She like, starts wondering if she just fucking runs this shit forever now. She expected Drogo to be gone for a few days, but then those days turned into a week, and then a week turned into two. And she’s been sending him emails and text messages, trying to be like: _What the fuck, bro?_ _I didn’t realize I was covering for your fucking vacation._

He responded back with: _LOL._

She now knows that Grey is totally fine. Because Grey’s face has graced one picture on Drogo’s Instagram. After getting past her worries, she is now actually ticked off that she is apparently being taken advantage of. She also regrets being shy and telling Drogo that she does not need to be paid. Because back when she said that, she thought she was covering him for like, _three days max._

She tries not to talk about work too much when she has Sunday dinner with her brother, Jess, and her niece. She’s a little tired because she stopped off at the office in the morning after getting off of her radio shift. Her sleep schedule has been way weird. She asks Camille about her classes. She asks Jessica about her job — which is as a social worker for a school district. She asks Mars about how she can score some beauty products to keep herself looking beautiful and young forever — it’s a joke. Because her face is currently not at its peppiest.

He says, “Sis, I gotchoo. Imma put together a nice package of face masks and some exfoliants. We’ll help you get rid of that layer of dead skin.” He reaches out and softly smears his calloused thumb down her cheek. He says, “Ugh.”

“Okay,” Missandei says, touching her own cheek. It honestly does not feel that bad to her. “Thanks for being delicate with your feedback.”

 

 

  
Grey and Drogo magically, randomly, and infuriatingly show up at the office on Monday morning in the third week that she’s covering for them. The staff meeting is about to start when everyone’s attention gets commandeered as those two guys enter the room. Drogo looks relaxed and really underdressed in a tank top and shorts. Grey does not look like he’s been ill at all. He’s wearing a baseball cap high on his head, eating a sub sandwich, and has a huge bottle of water in hand.

Drogo looks around the conference room perplexed and says, “What the fuck is going on here?”

“Team meeting,” Pyp says helpfully. “And hi, bosses! You guys are back! Are you okay, Grey? We all heard about the diarrhea that almost killed you.”

Missy starts at that — at the casual tone that Pyp adopts with Grey.

“Yeah,” Grey says, crinkling the red and white checkered wrapper around his sandwich. He picks out a sliced pickled pepper and a glistening bit of salami that has fallen out — and he pushes the bundle into his already full mouth. “It was pretty gross, and I am still recovering,” he adds, voice muffled.

“Yeah, how’s the sandwich?” Meera says — sounding half serious, half joking.

“It’s okay.”

“What the fuck are you guys doing?” Drogo repeats quizzically, checking the clock on his phone. “It’s early.”

“Missy moved team meetings an hour earlier because she doesn’t want us to dick around so much in the morning,” Meera offers. This statement makes Grey choke on his sandwich a little bit — he coughs with his mouth full to clear his pipes.

 

 

  
Drogo and Grey sit in on the team meeting. And while it makes sense because it’s _their team,_ she generally feels put on the spot, scrutinized, and undermined. Grey is fairly quiet and attentive except for the occasional crinkling of his sandwich wrapper and the occasional distracting manner in which he ducks down and takes huge bites from his sandwich before swinging his eyes back up to look at her intensely as he slowly chews — she has to look away. But Drogo is truly the worst. He has to punctuate these points that she makes — and he likes to do so randomly. He likes to say, “I agree!” or he says, _“Right,”_ like he’s confirming what she is saying, and it makes her want to snap at him and say _no shit_ he fucking _agrees._ He fucking agrees because she’s fucking _smarter_ than he is at this shit, and he just fucking left her stranded here with his fucking business while he went off gallivanting around the Summer Isles with his fucking _boyfriend_ with the bedroom eyes.

 

 

  
After the team meeting, the staff all disperse to their individual work stations. Grey has finished his sandwich, but is still working on his bottle of water. He burps, tosses his wrapper into a wastebasket, and then he gestures for her and Drogo to follow him into his office. Missandei wants to be like, oh _okay._ Fucking _okay._ And she follows Grey into his office like she is an obedient dog.

In Grey’s office, she immediately takes a seat at a small four-person table. Grey takes the seat facing her as Drogo casually shifts his hip on the corner of Grey’s desk next to Grey and hovers over the both of them. Grey then suddenly says, “Dude, you’re fucking amazing. Everything looks so good. I peeped it all on the flight home. _Thank you,_ Missandei.”

Which is shocking to her. She actually looks around — as if he could be talking to anyone else.

Drogo’s grin is so wide — splitting his face in two. He says, “I knew it was smart to put you in charge. God, I nailed that.”

“Yeah, man,” Grey says to Drogo. “Definitely take credit for doing none of the work.” To Missy, he says, “Sorry for leaving you in the lurch. And for not giving you any money in the two weeks you’ve been here — what the fuck, Drogo?” He means that he thinks Drogo should have given her an advance, but Drogo is stupid so Drogo didn’t. Grey is leaning over and pawing at his desk drawer, trying to pull it out so he can dig around for his company checkbook. She starts blushing when she sees him bring it back to the table and flip open the book. She’s still blushing when he asks, “What’s your rate?”

“Um . . .”

“You don’t know your rate,” he accurately guesses, pulling his eyes off of the check and putting them onto her face.

Again with the staring. She starts squirming — because she’s only ever been salaried her entire life. She currently makes slightly above minimum wage at the radio station.

“Okay,” he says, looking back down at the check. He starts scribbling stuff down, and then he shows Drogo, who leans over to look at the number before nodding and shrugging. Grey then tears off the check and hands it over to her.

Her mouth falls open when she looks at the number. Because she would have to work an entire year at the radio station to make this kind of money. Before she can start rambling on about how it’s a ridiculous amount and they are overpaying the shit out of her, Grey says, “It’s basically industry average. I multiplied the rate by forty even though I know you worked more than forty hours a week — and then I multiplied it by two and a half.”

“Two and a half?”

He grimaces. “Can you stay a few extra days?” He gestures to himself and Drogo. “We’re gonna be pretty jetlagged in a bit, so it’d be nice to still have your extra set of eyes for a couple more days. Do you mind?”

 

 

  
Grey and Drogo are shameless, so they call everyone into the conference room — everyone except for her. Presumably so that they could talk to the staff about her — right in front of her face, but out of earshot. It is completely in line with how Grey likes to work — very little politicking, very straightforward communication style. He literally confirms this shortly after he makes the request to the office. He says to her, “We’re gonna talk about you, and you can’t be there or else it’ll affect what they say about you ‘cause they don’t want to hurt your feelings or whatever.”

When he acts like this — when he says stuff like this — the memories she has of his adoring face smiling down at her because he thinks that she is so wonderful — well, those memories feel very far away. She stares back at his current blank expression. She says, “Uh, okay.”

 

 

  
“Okay, so how did the last two weeks go?”

“Grey,” Yoren says. “She is so beautiful and so elegant. I see why you were in love with her.”

After the longest pause — one in which Grey has to take a few deep breaths in order not to punch Yoren’s fucking face into dust, one in which Drogo’s skin color turns a little darker from trying not to burst out laughing, one in which the rest of them listen in rapt attention — Grey finally says, “So I was referring to _job performance._ How was her job performance?”

“Grey, come on,” Pyp says. “She’s _awesome._ Can you guys just hire her full-time? We actually need a managing director-slash-creative director.”

“She’s pretty expensive,” Drogo says. “That kind of expertise does not come cheap.”

“Yeah!” Meera says. “I actually looked her up one night! Her experience is crazy!”

“Yeah, man, that’s what I’m saying!” Drogo shouts — just leaning hard on his tendency to get loud today. “That shit don’t come cheap like you millennial fuckers!”

“Wait, are you saying that we fuck millennials or that we’re fucking millennials?” Jojen asks.

Drogo does not understand. And his patience is wearing thin. “What! What’s the fucking difference! Whatever, shut up! I’m saying, if we wanna hire her, maybe we have to fire like — four of you guys to free up some budget.”

 

 

  
When the glass door to the conference room opens again, she hears them all laughing as they are exiting. She hears Drogo grumble something about how they are all fired and also for them to just get the fuck back to work and out of his face. Then she sees Grey and Drogo appear in front of her desk — it’s actually Osha’s desk, but Missy has temporarily adopted it for the past two weeks.

“Yeaaah,” Drogo says slowly. “So since we paid for a few extra days of your time, we’re gonna go grab some lunch now. Can I have my car keys? You gonna hold it down here? You want us to bring you back some food?”

She slowly shakes her head — to the food and also in disbelief — because these fucking assholes. But she cannot really dispute them on facts. They certainly _did_ buy her ass. She pulls Drogo’s keys out of her purse and hands them to him. She says, “Yeah, sure. Go eat. Like, don’t even bother coming back at all, you know? Like, why don’t you go play a few rounds of golf or something? Just like, relax. I know that vacations can be stressful. Sometimes you need a vacation from vacation.”

Drogo nudges Grey. “That’s what I’ve been saying! Haven’t I been saying that!”

“He has,” Grey says blandly. “He’s been saying that all week.”

 

 

  
Over a steaming bowl of ramen — Drogo is the only one eating because Grey is still full from his sandwich — Drogo says what they are both generally thinking. He says, “I really want to fucking hire her. Did you see how tight that place was? Did you see the fucking files? Did you see the board? We can afford to hire her. We are really buying our sanity back, by hiring her.”

Grey sighs. “You’re jumping way ahead. You don’t even know if she wants a job with us.”

“Grey, she’s working for pennies, doing fucking boring-ass shit at her current job. Of course she will say yes. We have got to get to her before she comes to her senses and starts putting herself out there for real — then the price tag will go up. I know Tyrion has been eyeing her like a fucking _shark,_ that fucking _bitch.”_

“Are you trying to undercut what she’s worth?”

“Nah, man! I’m just saying! We don’t have Lannister money! We gotta appeal to her emotions.”

 

 

  
Grey tells Drogo he doesn’t know how smart it is for him to work with his ex — specifically to have her work under him as an employee. He tells Drogo that he’s actually serious about hiring someone more senior to manage the day-to-day operations that they are having trouble balancing with all of their shit — but it doesn’t have to be her. There are plenty of competent people out there that he could work okay with.

Drogo says, “True. This is true.”

Grey says that, on the other hand, is okay good enough? Because honestly, he’s never worked better with anyone in his whole life than Missandei — present company excluded of course.

At that, Drogo preens and says, “Yeaaah! I’m the _best_ you ever had, baby!”

Grey ignores the gloating. Instead he says, “I don’t know, man. It could get complicated.”

“Complicated, like how?” Drogo says, before picking up his bowl and slurping the soup.

“Like with, like —” Grey twirls his hand in a bunch of tight circles. “You know — you know what I’m trying try to say.”

Drogo grins. “You gotta verbalize it, man. Just let it out.”

“Like with how I can feel about her,” Grey says.

“How _do_ you feel about her?” Drogo says, grin widening.

Grey gives him a withering look. “Drogo — come on.”

 _“Agh!”_ Drogo says, dropping his jaw and rolling his head so that his neck cracks pleasantly. “I can actually _feel_ myself tense up in response to your insane level of repression. And I _don’t_ like it, Grey. I don’t like it at all. How do you _live_ like this?” And then Drogo suddenly goes rigid in his seat — because he gets struck with an idea. His brain goes a little ADHD and he says, “Yo, bud — have you ever thought about trying yoga! Oh my God, I bet you’d like it — or at the very least, I bet you’d tolerate it. But then you could touch your fucking toes —”

“Missandei looked real fucking awesome today,” Grey blurts.

Drogo laughs. “Yeah, man! She looks super hot today!”

“That’s terrible!”

“Why, though?”

“Because I don’t want to look at _that shit_ while I’m _working!”_ Grey exclaims.

“That’s such a weird thing to say!” Drogo says incredulously. “You’re an artist! You fucking _love_ looking at beautiful shit!”

“Nah, man. It’s like, ‘Can you put a bag over your face, Missandei?’ Like, can we make that one of the conditions that have to be met in order for her to work with us?”

“Nah, man. Speak for yourself. Unlike you, I have no problem working with people I’m sexually attracted to. Like, that’s fifty percent of the workforce, man. That’s _a lot_ of people — that I wouldn’t be able to work with — if I had issues — with my sexual attraction — to other people.” Drogo pauses. “And just think — if every person who was sexually attracted _to me_ decided that they just _cannot_ work with me — well, fuck. I would be so fucking _poor,_ it’s not even _funny,_ man.”

“Hey,” Grey says, looking mightily unimpressed with Drogo. “How did this conversation become about how good-looking you think you are?”

 

 

  
Grey mulls it over for a few days — Drogo is completely on board with trying to hire Missandei but is giving Grey the option to veto because Drogo knows that power of emotions is strong.

In the three days, Grey fights to correct his sleeping schedule, marvels at all of the _free time_ he has and how unburdened he feels, knowing that Missandei is at the office taking care of things. It feels so _good._

In the three days, Grey meets up with Dany for dinner, to prove to her that he’s okay and he’s still in one piece — also to pick her brain on the whole hiring Missandei thing. Dany has to lay her hands on him to make sure he is all in one piece — it makes him laugh as he pulls her in for a quick hug.

He wants to talk to Dany about this because she has a unique point of view, having once been Missandei’s boss at the same time she was Missandei’s friend. Dany knows the complexity of having a personal relationship with someone in addition to a professional one.

Dany tells him to tread really fucking carefully because this can blow up in his face in the most spectacular way. But also, Missandei is the very fucking best, and he would be so fucking lucky to have Missandei work for him. Like, Dany still has these fevered dreams of having Missandei in her corner again, just taking care of shit like a beast. Dany then says, “Damn, maybe I should hire her?”

“Yeah,” Grey says sarcastically. “That would involve being able to look her in the face and being able to have like, an entire conversation with her.”

“Wow,” Dany says. “Glass houses. Stones. _You.”_ She means that she has observed the very same difficulties in Grey. Grey is pretty bad at having entire conversations with Missandei, too.

“Dibs,” Grey says. “Dibs first. Don’t fuck me over, Dany. I get first dibs. Don’t mess with me on this, Dany. I will crush you.”

“Okay,” Dany says, pouting in a way that is mocking. “That’s really cute. I’m really scared of you. And I don’t think you can call dibs on her.”

 

 

  
Once again, Missandei is largely unaware of Grey’s inner turmoil when it comes to her. She is also largely unaware that she is suddenly a really hot commodity that everyone wants a piece of. She is unaware that she went from social pariah to the belle of the ball solely on the basis of her quality of work. She just thinks that she’s gonna finish out her stint at Grey and Drogo’s and then she’s gonna go back to her mundane existence at the radio station. She has started assisting in the planning of her farewell party — an after work happy hour with the staff. They have gotten pretty close in the short time they’ve worked together because it’s a bit of a small office. She has absolutely loved working with all of them, and she will miss them all a lot. She’s in the middle of fielding these questions about what cake flavor she’d like — she’s trying to tell Meera to not get her a whole fucking cake because it’s too much — when Grey beckons her into his office again.

Grey is not altogether confident in his decision to pull the trigger on this — but he’s a little panicked because he’s afraid that if he doesn’t pull the trigger due to his own fucking chicken shittery, someone else — someone like Dany, Tyrion, fucking Balon, even fucking some entity he has not even considered yet — will snatch her right out from under him.

“Sit down,” he says. And then he winces. Because it sounded like an order and not a request.

She does sit down at his table anyway. She is looking at him in confusion. “What’s up?” she says warily.

“Everyone really likes you here,” he blurts, trying to ply her with the compliments. Drogo suggested he do this. Drogo told him people like it when nice things are said about them.

“Oh. That’s sweet. I really like everyone, too.”

“The work is accurate. And consistent. But I mean, that’s not a surprise. You are reliable.”

“Thanks?” She is looking at him like he has grown a second head.

“We used to work well together, don’t you think? You know? Me with my camera. You with your . . . clipboard.”

“Uhhh, where is this going?” she says, furrowing her brows.

“Work here,” he says. And again, it sounds like an order. Not a request. He winces. He is the fucking worst. Drogo should really be doing this. But Drogo told him that it would make a much bigger impact if he was the one delivering this proposal.

“Excuse me?”

“I mean, _please,_ work here,” he says. “We want to hire you on full time.”

 

 

  
In a daze, Grey walks up to Drogo and tells Drogo that Missandei said no. She rejected the job offer — before they even got to the salary. Grey actually told her that they can give her a competitive salary, but she told him it’s not about the money.

Drogo kind of responds melodramatically. He lets out this wail like he is in anguish. He hits Grey hard in the shoulder, making Grey stumble back a step. They have a very transparent office — so this actually happens within view of the rest of the staff and Missandei, who still has to finish out the day. Drogo looks at her and he says, “What the fuck! Come _on,_ Missy!”

 

 

 

 


	15. Missy plays hard to get

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grey and Drogo try to woo Missandei with a bunch of promises and threats and obstinate anger. Missandei wonders if it's a terrible idea to work for former love of life.

 

 

  
Everyone is really bumming her out and making her feel guilty during her goodbye happy hour party. Everyone is really glum because she said no to the job offer. Meera’s face is dour and frowny when she presents Missandei with a dozen cupcakes of different flavors, because this way, Missandei does not have to pick a favorite before she leaves their lives _forever._ Missy is like, wow, kids are dramatic these days — and then she picks out a carrot cake cupcake because she loves cream cheese frosting.

There is no joy when the drinks and food come. At the end of dinner, Jojen asks her, “Is it us? Did we do something to make you not want to work with us?”

And Pyp answers for her. He says, “No, it is not us. It is him.” Pyp is referring to Grey.

 

 

  
After the kids and Yoren all disperse into their various cars and ride-shares, after Drogo picks up the bill for everyone on the company card, she releases a breath and then tries to smile at Drogo and Grey. She says, “The kids are so dramatic, huh?”

“Babe, come on,” Drogo says. “What the fuck? Is it because you guys used to smash? Like, he promised me he will not make things weirder than the normal kind of weird that he typically brings.”

“Um, it’s not just because of that,” she says carefully, trying not to laugh in case it takes away from the seriousness of this conversation. She tells them it’s a multitude of things beyond that. It’s the fact that she could feel herself fading back into old patterns in the last couple of weeks — she’s been working really long days at their office, and then sometimes she went off and did a shift at the radio station on top of that. That is some excessive shit, and she is addicted to work — it’s a bit of a slippery slope for her. She doesn’t want to get back to the point where she is physically unhealthy and is endangering herself and losing her mind because all she can see is the job.

“We can help you with that,” Drogo insists. “We can all help each other with this. This is precisely why we want to bring you on — so Grey doesn’t fucking have his own breakdown and start threatening to kill people.”

“Aw, that was a really special moment in my life,” she says, grinning.

Drogo flashes her a smile of his own. “What if I can personally guarantee that you never have to do more than ten hours a day most of the time? Like, most of the staff does not work more than ten a day. It’s me and Grey that go way overtime. And between the three of us — we can divide up the work so that we can generally stick to normal hours.”

“Ah,” she says. “It’s honestly super tempting —”

“So say yes!”

She shushes him so she can think. She goes, “Sh sh!” as she leans forward and touches her fingertip to his lips. He recoils because he honestly does not know where her hand has been.

She tells them that the other thing is that — as much as she loved just being so good at her job — there’s always a part of her that wonders if that is the kind of work she should be doing. She’s not sure she has passion for being part of a production team. She’s been taking pictures for instance, and while she knows that she’s not gonna go pro with it, it’s been really fun to just do something different. She studied fine art in college and kind of just fell into producing because of an internship straight out of school. Part of why she only works part time at the station is that she’s trading money for love — for the opportunity to try new things and for more chances to be around the people she loves — like her brother and her nieces. She’d also like to be able to take a bonafide vacation for the first time in . . . maybe ever.

“Did you not tell her what her job title would be?” Drogo asks Grey.

Grey just stiffly sits there and makes it clear that he did _not_ tell her what her job title would be. He says, “We didn’t get that far.”

“Job title doesn’t really matter to me,” she says.

“Missy,” Drogo says. “We’re not looking for you to be another project manager or our operations person. I mean, you’d do that stuff, just like Grey and I have to do that stuff. But we actually need a creative director.”

“Oh,” she says.

“We don’t even have the time to put our eyes on everything,” Drogo says. “Sometimes weird, narrow shit just leaves the door because it just went too far down the wrong path, and we can’t fix it because it costs time and money. So we send out real bogus shit sometimes. And Yoren is like — Yoren is great with visuals, and he’s a great illustrator. That’s currently not enough.” Drogo pauses. “I didn’t realize you studied fine art in college. What was your concentration?”

She laughs. She says, “Textiles.”

“What!” he barks. “That is so random!” He looks to Grey. “Did you know about this?”

“Yeah,” he says softly. “I did.”

 

 

  
From Missy’s point of view, this is all happening really fast, and it’s really jarring. In a relatively short amount of time — in less than a year — they went from being sort of antagonistic strangers to them sitting down and offering her a job. She doesn’t really understand how their feelings for her can shift like this. She’s unaware that Drogo is kind of bad at holding grudges and the mechanism at work during the five years she was gone was her physical absence. It is hard for him to have to watch someone he loves struggle — whether it was his dad, his mom, any of his sisters, or Grey. It was hard for Drogo to watch Grey struggle and be unable to do anything to fix it. All he could do was be angry with her — because that’s generally his mode. He gets angry at people. He got angry with his father. He gets angry with Dany.

But then Missandei showed up and she just _struggled._ He watched her struggle, too. That ended up being kind of rough and painful to watch, too. Her physical frailty made him breathless. Her physical presence made him remember a lot of things about her — and it makes him care for her again.

Missandei went from being able to read Grey like the back of her hand to being unable to read him at all. She thinks he’s just opportunistic, a little apathetic, and also in some sort of relationship with Dany, so of course he’s not really thinking about how this situation could potentially just fucking destroy her again. There is just always going to be weird context that is always hanging over her head — them being together at one point in their lives — like, her really being in love with him. And then them not being together at all, because she chose her job. So she doesn’t know what _this_ currently _is._ Out loud, she asks, “Isn’t it strange if we let work be the thing to bring us back into each other’s lives, when it was the thing that drove us apart?”

“I don’t see how it’s that weird,” Drogo says.

She’s not really speaking to Drogo right now, though.

 

 

  
Grey would argue that how he feels about her right now is basic and physical. He does not really know her that well anymore, so it has to be physical and it has to partly be based on his memories of her. He thinks she looks fantastic, and it is sometimes distracting. Drogo was right. It _was_ easier for him to ignore her when she was seriously underweight and not as pretty. Grey is actually really superficial and gross.

He would argue that how he feels about her is testosterone-driven because sometimes she just brings out the worst in him. All of these old ghosts are coming out. Around her, he is possessive and he is jealous and his ability to properly verbalize his thoughts and feelings get stopped up in his throat because he’s an idiot and gets distracted by like, boobs. She has conditioned a lot of things in him that he is not really a fan of. He would argue that he partly feels this way out of habit — and also because it’s probably part of his nature because he is a man. His psychology is different from Drogo's. He is never very at ease with how fucking gross his brain can get. He is probably insecure and self-conscious.

And that’s cool. He can probably get over that in time.

He tells her, “If you remember, in the beginning, I did not want to date you. Because I was sure dating you meant that I’d eventually lose you. But you told me to try it. And I did. And I was _right._ I lost you as a girlfriend and as a friend. But you know, a lot of time has passed, and we need a CD real bad. It would be good to gain you as an employee.”

To Grey, Drogo says, “Oh my God, this is how you sell someone a _job?”_

“I’m not going to _beg!”_ Grey snaps — sounding surprisingly forceful and adamant about this. “This is a really good job. It’s good pay. We do really good work. I don’t need to sell _anyone_ on this job. Either you want it. Or you _don’t._ I don’t want to force _anyone_ into doing something they don’t want to do.”

“Whoa,” Drogo says quietly.

“And you can always quit,” Grey says, speaking directly to Missandei. “If you hate it — if you end up hating working with me again. No one is shackling you to me _forever._ And if I end up hating your work, I can always fire you.”

“Damn,” Drogo says, laying his hand on Grey’s shoulder. “I think you mean that _we_ can always fire her, bud. We’re a team, remember?”

This actually kind of works, in terms of nudging her in a more positive direction. There’s something about the look in his eyes — the anger and the steadfastness — that touches something inside of her. There’s something about this that appeals to her. She says, “Okay, let me think about this for a few days.”

 

 

  
Grey catches Jaime during one of his study breaks — sort of. Jaime actually purposely left the house for a quick dinner at Grey’s request. Jaime has spent the past year trying to crash-course himself through investment and business basics. The way Jaime tells it, his dad was a huge fucking douche and didn’t bother creating a succession plan for his independent advisory firm. His dad’s partners wanted to buy out the Lannister shares of the firm, and Jaime was like, completely fine with that because his dad’s partners actually know what they are doing. But Cersei and Shae were really not cool with that and made things really terrible. Beyond their mismanagement and inexperience, the market is also experiencing a downturn so revenue fell nearly twenty percent in the last year, and this is a fifty percent decrease overall from its peak about ten years ago.

So Jaime kind of took it upon himself to try and right the disaster. Tyrion is definitely the most intelligent of them all, but Tyrion wants nothing to do with the business.

Because of his situation, Jaime’s point of view lately has been very much oriented through a specific lens. Like, over dinner, he asks Greys, “How much would she add to your fixed costs? Because if your fixed costs are above a certain percent, you’re not gonna make any money, no matter how good you are.”

Grey says, “Jaime, don’t worry about that. The money isn’t my concern.”

Jaime looks disturbed. He has a little bit of PTSD, having ridden through a few waves of financial uncertainty in the past year.

“This is really an increase in capacity,” Grey says, sighing, indulging in Jaime’s hysteria. “With her on board, we have more oversight — we can hire more freelancers on a per-project basis — thus, billing more. I’m betting she will recoup her salary and then some in like, a few months.”

“Oh. okay,” Jaime says.

“So do you think it’s a good idea to hire her?”

“Well, _yeah,_ dude,” Jaime says blankly. “You just explained why. She bills high.”

“It would be really good for the kids to have more oversight and guidance,” Grey says. “All of them have so much latent talent, and I just feel bad because I just don’t have the capacity all the time to help them get better.”

“Oh, for sure,” Jaime says. “This is what they don’t tell you in business school — all of the fucking _feelings_ and how emotionally responsible you feel for people’s fucking lives.”

Jaime is referring to the fact that he has not taken a salary in probably the entire time he’s worked at his dad’s company. He’s toiling at the company because his family fucked it up and the company has these employees that have been with the company for _decades,_ who depend on their paychecks to put their kids through college and pay their mortgages. Jaime is referring to the fact that he stuck around on their show for a few years after Grey and Drogo jumped ship — because he couldn’t stand the guilt of taking people’s jobs away from them just because he didn’t feel professionally fulfilled. Jaime has since figured out that this is probably his lot in life — doing shit he doesn’t really want to do because someone else wants or needs him to. It started with his dad. And it’s actually continuing on because of his dad even though his dad is dead. Great.

“You didn’t go to business school though,” Grey says.

“Yeah. Thanks for reminding me.”

“Yo, do you have some availability weeknights? I might get some actual free time coming up in the near future — which is nuts — and I was wondering if you wanted to like, take a yoga class together?”

“You wanna do yoga, Grey?” Jaime says blandly.

“Yeah. Drogo thinks it’d be a good idea. What? You think it’s stupid?”

“No, I’m totally into it. I do this yoga on demand at home, using my streaming account, but it would be cool to take a real class. I need to learn how to _relax_ better. I just didn’t think you would be into yoga.”

 

 

  
She does a lot of Googling, to figure out how just how dumb of an idea it is to work with an ex. However, the internet is really limited in how it can help her because the articles that come up are typically stuff about having to continue working with an ex right after a breakup happens. There are like, no articles about breaking up, not seeing each other for five years, and then coming back together in a professional capacity. There are no articles that take her unique circumstances into consideration. Like, doesn’t it make a difference that the ex is kind of brilliant? Like, she wouldn’t ever work with Jared, but that’s because his job was boring and he was kind of ordinary. Like, should she shoot her career in the foot just because she used to look upon Grey’s face and see an entire universe of possibilities?

She starts crowdsourcing opinions.

Yara, who is in the industry, is a hearty yes. Yara tells Missandei that those motherfuckers — she means Grey and Drogo — are going places. And it’s totally smart to hitch to their wagons. Yara tells Missandei that if she works for Drogo and Grey, Missy basically will get carte blanche to do whatever the fuck she wants — and isn’t that just the fucking _dream?_ People toil for decades to get the kind of responsibility and power that she is being offered right now.

Obara is a definite no. Obara thinks it’s weird. Obara thinks that when relationships end, they should just be over and people should just move on with their lives. Obara thinks it’s weird that Missandei still talks to Grey. Obara thinks it’s weird that Yara is buddy-buddy with Grey because Yara is not the sort of person that ever hurts for friends, so why him? What is it _about this guy?_ What is it about this intensely quiet and tense guy that Obara is just _not getting?_ Obara says she thinks it’s weird that Missandei, who probably has pick of the crop of jobs, is considering this potentially fraught situation for herself. Obara says, “What happens when he gets married?”

Missandei heart stops. In an instant, her world basically goes black. She weakly says, “He’s getting married?”

“What? No — uh, I don’t know. That was a fucking _hypothetical,_ but _look_ at how you _reacted_ when you thought he was getting _married!”_ Obara snaps. _“See!_ This is really _not_ a good idea! That _motherfucker_ is going to _mess_ you _up!_ And your _mental state_ is _not_ at its _strongest_ right now!”

Obara got Missy all scared. Over her mental state and also over the possibility of Grey getting married. But freaking out over exes getting married is a pretty normal thing for her. Like, she freaked out when Harry got married to Jeff. Harry is super gay.

So Ygritte is useless. Ygritte basically tells her to follow her heart and to go with her gut.

She manages to see Gendry for like, an hour in between his sex sessions with Arya. It’s been less than a month, and he’s back visiting. Missandei actually wonders if she was once so fucking annoying and distracted by love. Gendry can barely focus on her dilemma — he’s constantly checking his phone for text messages from Arya. Gendry tells Missandei to “go for it!” because it seems like “a great opportunity!”

She talks to the guys at the radio station. Rodrick kind of pumps his arm up like, huzzah! And he tells her that he knew when she walked into the station that she was not long for their world. She is such a smart cookie.

Mars is initially adamantly against the idea — because Grey is back on his shit list and Grey keeps fucking yanking the chain of Mars’ poor and pathetic sister around — Missandei kind of blinks hard at that, because she hasn’t thought about herself in those terms in like, at least three weeks — and she tells Mars that he might be right. On the job thing. Not on her being pathetic. She actually thinks she’s turned a corner on that.

Mars completely does a one-eighty when he learns how much the job would potentially pay. He has dollar signs in his eyes, and he says to her, “Oh my God, are you _stupid? Run_ to him, Miss! Don’t walk. _Run_ before he changes his mind and decides that you’re not worth it!”

Surprisingly, the best bit of feedback and advice Missandei gets is from her niece.

Camille says, “If he wasn’t going to be your boss — if it was another person who is gonna be your boss — would you take the job?”

“Absolutely,” Missandei says.

Camille says, “What’s the worst that can happen, if you take the job and he’s your boss?”

It’s actually something Missandei hasn’t thought about yet. Her dread has been rather abstract. She thinks it over. She supposes that sometimes she might feel bad — maybe because she ends up taking something too personally maybe. She tries to think of a situation in which he’d be unfair to her, because of their past personal relationship — and she actually cannot imagine a situation in which he’d be petty or punishing because of personal issues. Like, in the past, he was always really awesome and really professional — when they were estranged, when they were fighting, when they were sleeping together — he was very consistent in the past.

Missandei says, “I think the worst thing that can happen is that it just doesn’t work anymore. We just don’t work well together anymore.”

“Then you can quit?”

“Yeah,” Missandei says. “I can quit.”

“What’s the best that can happen?” Camille asks.

Missandei’s face opens up into a laugh, as she leans over to touch Camille’s hand. She says, “Cash money. Cash money just raining down. Enough cash money for us to like, take a trip during your next summer break?”

“Oh my gosh,” Camille says softly — shyly. “Really?”

 

 

  
She puts Grey and Drogo on a group text and she texts them: _Yes._

And Grey immediately responds back with: _??_

And Drogo writes back: _!!!!_

And then he adds: _Yessss._

She’s laughing — she feels _really_ happy — when her cell phone rings and she sees who is calling. She picks up the call and into the receiver, she says, “You better not make me regret this!”

On the other end, Drogo says, “Hold please,” as he patches in a third line and dials Grey’s number.

When Grey hops on, he immediately says, “Okay, so I get what that yes means now.”

 

 

  
They generally just start gushing about how amazing and awesome it’s going to be to work together again. It’s going to be like old times — except way better because they do not have to deal with Dany’s fucking bullshit or Jaime’s fucking bullshit or anyone’s bullshit but their own. Grey starts excitedly talking about how he wants to revamp the entire work process because the current process is imperfectly designed for his and Drogo’s limited bandwidth. Now that she is on board, they can do things _properly._ Drogo starts joking about how much of a relief it will be, to have a woman on board in a leadership role because he gets so much shit and grief from those fucking kids about working in a male-dominated company. Like, they’re a minority-owned business, Jesus Christ, is that not enough? But with her beautiful, bouncy womanly ass of color on board, those fucking white kids can finally find some other shit to get really uppity about.

They start talking about where they are going to put her — there are only two offices and Osha is coming back from maternity leave at some point. Missandei says she doesn’t mind sitting out with creative, she would prefer it, actually. She does not need or want an office. Grey says that he and Drogo are not always in office, anyway, so if she ever needs privacy for a call or whatever, she can always pop into one of the rooms and just use it. They have to find her a desk. Does she want the window? Should they tell Yoren to get the fuck off of the wall? Oh shit, Yoren is going to directly report to her now. That is going to be fun.

“Man, with you on board, we should have should have some sort of sexual harassment training or something,” Drogo says randomly. “Those kids are constantly dating and breaking up with each other, and it’s so fucking annoying when they bring it in to work.”

 

 

  
She asks for two weeks notice, so she can close out at the radio station properly. Grey and Drogo are not really into the idea, and they tell her it would be great if she could just start asap. She thinks that they are joking at first, but then she remembers who she is talking to — so she clarifies. She says, “No, I really mean it. I need two weeks. You need to wait two weeks.”

Drogo says, “It’s a fucking minimum wage radio job that a college kid can do on the weekend, Missandei.”

After a pause, Missandei says, “Yeah, I don’t know what to tell you, man. I will not start for another two weeks.”

“Oh, shit, okay,” Drogo says. “So that’s how it’s gonna be with you now. Well, okay. You can have your two weeks.”

“Man, you don’t get to give me permission to have two weeks,” she says. “I’m _telling_ you — I need two weeks.”

“And I’m saying! It’s _fine_ with me if you take _two weeks!”_

“Drogo, I don’t _care_ if it’s _okay_ with _you_ for me to take two weeks.”

“Oh my _God,_ how am I supposed to say this so you will get the fuck off my balls about it already?”

“Just shut up. Just be quiet.”

He actually listens. He actually says nothing in response to that.

To break up the pause, Grey says, “Okay, so your start date is on the fifth of next month. I’d like to set up payroll and onboard before then, though. So that we don’t lose the first week to admin stuff. Do you mind coming into the office before your start date to do paperwork?”

“Oh, sure,” she says. “That’s fine.”

 

 

 


	16. Missy starts her new job

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Missy learns that teenagers sometimes suck. Grey lawyers up. Drogo flirts. And there is some low-key yearning here and there.

 

 

  
Missandei ends up sort of bribing Sarah with promises of a free vacation in order to come and visit for dinner. Sarah shows up at Mars’ house by herself in big gold hoop earrings, fashionably ripped jeans, neon yellow nails, long dark hair that has been straight-ironed from root to tip, and a fake leather jacket. Mars is still at work.

Missandei peaks her head out the door and says, “Where’s your mama? I was hoping to say hi to her and to talk to her real quick.”

“Oh, she didn’t drop me off,” Sarah says, gliding into the room and dumping her bag on the ground on her way to the kitchen. “I came in an Uber.”

“You got an Uber?” Missandei repeats, glancing at Camille. “Your mom is okay with you riding in cars with strange men?”

“My Uber driver was actually a woman,” Sarah says, stooping down a little bit to try and see what is baking in the oven. “And who do you think pays for the Uber?”

This child actually manages to unnerve Missandei, just enough for her responses to be completely illogical. Like, instead of slapping this child silly out for that clapback on the Uber driver, Missy generally just stands there with her mouth flapping open and close in shock — like she’s a dumb fish.

 

 

  
They all have dinner when Marselen gets home. He knew that Sarah was coming over, but nonetheless, when he sees her, he responds disproportionately. He looks like he fucking won the lottery or something. He is super effusive, super enthusiastic — she looks vaguely uncomfortable and pretty reluctant to reciprocate — and then he asks her if she needs anything — a soda or something?

Dinner is a baked pasta, a salad, and dinner rolls. It’s a casserole. It’s a shit ton of carbs. It’s food that Missandei doesn’t eat anymore because she’s reached her ideal weight. And it’s food that she generally never makes, but she asked Camille if Sarah is still a picky eater and Camille said yes.

 

 

  
Missy knows that it’s the right thing to do — because she has two nieces and she does honestly love Sarah, too. But fucking Sarah is annoying, selfish, and hard to appease. And she’s fifteen years old, which is one of the worst ages for girls.

Missy thought it would be fun to brainstorm places to go with both of her nieces, decide on something together. Camille is working overtime to impress her auntie because she’s intimidated that her aunt is so well-traveled, so Camille is throwing out really adventurous ideas like Yunkai and Vaes Dothrak — and Missandei is appreciative and like, “Whoa, _okay!_ So it’s like _that,_ huh?”

And then Sarah pretty much just throws cold water over all of Camille’s cute enthusiasm. Sarah is too cool. Turns out that Sarah is currently real basic. Sarah wants to go to Casterly Rock or Lannisport. She wants to go to Highgarden. And if they really have to go somewhere far away, she’d rather go to a place like Valyria because of the culture and the fashion there.

“Valyria is cool,” Missandei slowly says, but it is also the very fucking worst. “But wouldn’t you rather like, maybe to go Naath? Would you guys wanna see where your grandparents came from?”

“I don’t really want to go to a third world country, Auntie,” Sarah says — not at all reluctantly.

 

 

  
After Sarah goes home — after Mars insists on driving her instead of rolling dice and hoping that a rapist does not pick her up, Missy turns to Camille and swings her arm around Camille’s shoulders. Missy hugs her better niece, and she says, “Your sister is opinionated. Maybe we’ll do two trips? One that Sarah wants and one that you want.”

Camille frowns. “That’s so much money.”

“Oh, I ain’t taking you guys to Valyria,” Missy says. “We can do a long weekend in Highgarden and like, look at a lot of flowers.”

 

 

  
While they have not brought in an employee at this level before — they did bring in Yoren and Osha, and they did go through a few rounds of negotiation with Sandor before it didn’t work out and Sandor took a job elsewhere. A lot of things were learned with Sandor — which is why Grey grabs Drogo and gets on the phone with their lawyer and later, with their accountant. He tells their lawyer that Missandei is currently a little naive due to general unfamiliarity with the kind of work they are doing, but she’s really quick and she will catch up soon enough. And when she does, everything needs to be set up properly so that she does not abscond because she perceives that she is being treated unfairly.

Grey suggests lowering the salary they offered, but then offering option to purchase membership interest in the company. Drogo — who is not as clever or studied with this sort of thing as Grey forces himself to be — balks and says, “You want to pay her _less._ And then you want to take _money_ from her on top of that?”

“She’s not motivated by money,” Grey says into speakerphone. “She’s said so herself, repeatedly, that money isn’t the driving force behind her decision to work. What do people like us ultimately want?”

Drogo looks puzzled. Their lawyer actually lightly jokes, “I am motivated by money. That is why I went to law school.”

Drogo laughs. Grey doesn’t. Grey says, “It’s freedom and it’s agency. It’s the freedom to create things. And the agency to carry things through from start to finish. It’s ownership. So let’s give her that. You said appeal to her emotions, Drogo. It’s a good show of faith on our part. It shows we are serious about this. And it makes it harder for her to leave us —”

Ah, he really hates that he carelessly articulated himself that way. Drogo immediately notices and looks at Grey with his eyes full of like — intent and scrutiny. It was an accident.

Their lawyer is totally confused. Her voice chirps out of the speakerphone. “Hello? Did I lose you guys?”

“Sorry,” Grey says, clearing his throat. “It’s the right thing to do and it’s a good way to retain talent. We learned this lesson with Clegane, didn’t we? Also, Tricia, can you draw up assignment of inventions agreement?” He means that they need to make it clear that they own her intellectual property for the entire time that she works for their company.

 

 

  
Grey has Tricia come into the office the same day that Missandei does to do paperwork even though it’s kind of below Tricia’s pay grade and her hourly cost is really high. But he thinks it’s worth it to have Tricia explain this shit to Missandei and to let Missandei ask questions instead of having him paraphrase it and having Missandei read a billion sheets of forms and agreements and contracts. Drogo is not around because he’s on a shoot. And also, Drogo is kind of useless with this stuff. Drogo is great in meetings and at selling and at interfacing with clients. Grey does this kind of procedural stuff by himself typically.

The salary thing goes over pretty well. She’s smart, so Missandei gets it pretty quickly — she’s negotiated a lot of contracts with freelancers in the past, so she generally gets the guiding principles — and she is surprised at the forethought and the gesture. She is also surprised by his savviness and the slight manipulative edge of it. This is not really a quality that she remembers him having, so he must’ve accumulated this in the time that they’ve been apart.

She wants another week of paid time off. That’s really the only sticking point for her. She is determined to live her life differently this time around. So instead of the three weeks that they offered her, she is asking for four, with no blackout dates. She agrees to the lower salary and she agrees to the option to purchase membership interest.

He easily agrees to her terms. He updates the offer letter, prints it out, and puts it in front of her sign, along with all of the other shit she needs to sign.

As he does this, while Tricia momentarily stepped out to take a phone call, Missandei leans over the table and she conspiratorial says to him, “This is so nuts.”

He says, “What is?”

“You being so _good_ at this,” she says, smiling at him. “It’s _so cool_ to watch you be good at this.”

The unexpected compliment — and her soft face and her tone and her voice and everything about her in this moment — just embarrasses the fuck out of him. So he cuts away eye contact and just becomes forcefully quiet and rigid. He’s actually remembering these conversations they’ve had together in the past, about him quitting the show. She used to ask him what he was going to do instead, if it wasn’t his job. His concept of what he was going to do — back then — was so vague. Back then, it was just all based on feelings. He wanted more freedom. He wanted more agency. He wanted more control over his life. He just didn’t know what it was going to look like. He used to doubt himself, and he used to tell her all the ways he was probably going to fail. He used to tell her that all he is really good at is taking direction and pointing a camera at stuff. He’s not good at talking or at business or at marketing himself or anything useful like that. And she used to curl up with him in bed on lazy mornings, and she used to quietly tell him — with her voice, her lips, her tongue, and her body — that he was going to figure it out — he was going to figure it all out.

This memory is why he suddenly feels embarrassed.

Missandei can tell that she said the wrong thing — somehow. She feels awkward and silly, too. She thinks that she probably sounded really patronizing and stupid. Because like, of course, duh. Of course he’s good at this. How can he not be? He’s been doing this for years. She sounds so dumb sometimes.

 

 

  
When she actually starts work, she learns that Grey basically behaves like every control freak boss who is a little bit in denial about his control freak tendencies. He spins his worst traits and he calls his inability to trust and to delegate to others as a desire for maintaining high standards. He calls the extra number of bloated touch points quality control. He says a lot of contrary things back to back, like let’s not reinvent the wheel, but let’s also not jump on a fucking bridge just because everyone else is doing it. He _obsesses_ over really minute details sometimes and makes everyone stop work as he continues _obsessing_ and gets all pissed that no one else seems to give as much of a shit about quality of work as he does. He also has a manner of speaking that basically sounds unkind. He doesn’t insult, but he might be unaware that hearing a litany of hypercritical feedback kind of demoralizes people.

Missandei already knows all this stuff about him — but it’s been awhile since they’ve worked together — so they still end up butting heads her first full week of work.

He basically ends up lying to her, because he tells her she should feel free to make it her own. When she starts going about doing just that — he basically freaks out. He freaks out when she schedules a meeting with his staff without him. They have an argument about it in his office, in which she calmly tells him that he cannot possibly be at every staff meeting. He tells her he wants to be at some of them. She tells him that she will let him know which ones he needs to be present for. He tells her that to start, he’d like to sit in on all of them. She tells him that that is completely unnecessary. Also, his presence is a distraction sometimes. He tells her that it’s for quality control. Her hackles get raised at the words “quality control,” and she says, “I thought you said you weren’t gonna micromanage me.”

He says, “I’m not just gonna turn over control of my company to you, just like that.”

She says, “You are overreacting. All I did was call a staff meeting.”

He says, _“You_ are _overreacting!_ All I want is to just sit in on your _first_ meeting with the staff.”

And then she says, “See, this is why you guys work _constantly,_ Grey. You spend the morning and daytime running the business, managing the staff, pushing along the projects — all the while, the really _big billables,_ the projects in which you and-or Drogo are the leads on just _sit there._ Because you are busy managing this office during the work day. _Then,_ after the workday is done and all of your staff goes home — well, _that’s_ when you start on your billable work, right? And you stay up late, you barely get any sleep, and then you wake up in the shittiest mood, you take it out on your staff, you get sloppy with your work — and it just loops over and over again. _Doesn't_ it?” She pauses, crosses her arms and lightly shrugging. “If you want me here, you don’t get to sit in on every staff meeting. I will let you know _when_ we need you.”

 

 

  
Oh God. He really wants to punch her in her beautiful face so that it is no longer beautiful. He has to leave the office before he ends up doing just that. He actually grabs his shit — tosses his laptop into his bag and pulls the strap over his shoulder — and he gives her a look as he stands in the doorway. He hopes that he’s looking at her like, hey, fuck you.

She looks right back at him. She’s looking at him like she’s saying, okay, bye bitch!

And he grunts before he fucking leaves the joint like he doesn’t fucking own it — like he fucking didn’t just get told in front of his staff and shit — and he generally spends the elevator ride down to the ground floor feeling a little bit self righteous and dumb.

In this first week — he simultaneously blanks out on what it used to feel like — being sweetly in love with her when he was younger — as his current sexual attraction to her basically ratchets up to a new and scary sort of fever pitch. He is _amped._ He can go for a run. He can fucking punch a clown because he can’t punch her face. He can totally jack off right now if he felt like it. Shit.

He actually ends up just going to a coffee shop with wifi and checking his emails there. He responds to a lot of emails. He like, updates his calendar. He syncs a bunch of files so he can review them, as he leisurely drinks a latte from a paper cup.

 

 

  
After the first week, Drogo is sold. Drogo is in love. With his new life. And he is in love with the beautifully productive creature that is named Missandei. He feels so good about the trajectory of things that after hours on Friday — right before they shut down the office for the weekend — he’s watching her clean out the fridge with a camera in his lap. He snaps photos of her back — the curve of her spine and the back of her head — and her arms reaching into the fridge. He listens to her laugh as she asks him if anything is actually turning out good.

He laughs quietly, as he walks over and spins her around with his hand on her hip. He raises that hand up and he cups her cheek, orienting her face up so he can look at her face. He does this — he flirts. He likes women. He likes women who are pretty. He really likes _her,_ for many, _many_ reasons. He likes how she squirms under his attention, for instance, and how she refuses to look at him directly in the eyes. He likes that there is this entirely unguarded and innocent quality to her — a quality that Dany just _completely_ lacks.

She yelps and squeals and then giggles as he suddenly digs his fingers into her stomach. She’s gasping and yelling at him to stop it, as she ineffectively fights off the tickle attack. She whines out, “Oh my God, I’m gonna pee!”

“Guys,” Grey says, poking his head into the break room. Whoa, he’s wearing a tux again. And he’s on the phone. “Sorry, but I’m on a call right now, and it’s hard to hear.”

“Oh!” Missandei says, grabbing onto Drogo’s still hands. “Sorry!”

 

 

  
Drogo and Missandei are kind of waiting for him by the door when he finishes his meeting. The office lights are already turned off, and she’s smiling at him with her bag hanging off her shoulder. Drogo flashes Grey his keys. Drogo grins and rakishly says, “You need a ride. I really cannot have you take the subway looking _that_ good, baby.”

“I’m meeting Dany at the opera house for a thing,” Grey explains.

“Yeah, I figured it was Dany-related,” Drogo say, his smile softening. “You don’t dress up for nothing.”

“I was actually gonna take a cab,” Grey says awkwardly. He kinda didn’t expect them to be waiting for him.

“Save your money,” Drogo says. He tilts his head to Missandei. “I was gonna take her out for an impromptu celebratory dinner as a congrats and good job on the first week kind of deal — we were actually gonna ask you if you wanted to join, but —”

“I’m busy,” Grey finishes.

“It’s on the way,” Drogo says. “Come on. Grab your shit.”

 

 

  
The ride to the opera house is simultaneously brief and long. It kind of gets tense and strained in Drogo’s car. Missandei says a whole lot of nothing — just looks out the window and watches the scenery go by.

He leaves his messenger bag in Drogo’s backseat, because he can. He softly asks, “Hey, can I pick this up from you when I see you tomorrow?”

“Of course,” Drogo says. “Now go have fun.”

“Oh, it’s not going to be fun.”

“Dany never is. Tell her we said hi.”

“Okay.”

“Grey?”

He pauses, with the passenger door already half open. “Yeah?”

“I love you.”

That makes him pause and glance at Drogo. His face warms up a little bit — only because of the audience. And also tuxes are super confining. Grey says, “I love you, too.” He swallows. “Okay, bye for real. Talk to you guys later.”

 

 

 


	17. Grey is well-rested

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grey gets a taste of the good life and is not completely at ease. We still don't get what Dany's intentions are. Drogo is just circling the drain. Missandei continues to advocate for herself. Gets rewarded for it.

 

 

 

  
When she gets his text informing her that he is in the building, she spins around and starts eyeing the entrance, waiting for him to cross through the threshold. He is generally hard to miss because people who show up at these things don’t typically look like he does — and she doesn’t mean young and handsome. There are lot of men here who are young and handsome — and ethnic. She actually means something else — something she has a hard time putting a word to. She supposes that part of it is that he still looks _up_ when he walks into the opera house — he looks up at the ceiling because there is a massive blown glass installation in the entrance. He’s been here probably on a dozen other occasions — all with her — and she always catches his eyes drifting up. He has told her that he thinks the installation is really fucking cool.

Sure enough, when he appears, his nose is pointed to the ceiling — he is not looking for her at all, and he is amazingly not walking into anyone.

 

 

  
She smiles and she tells him that he’s a little bit late. He’s touching his bowtie — trying to nudge it loose a little bit — and he jogging up the steps, catching up to her easily because her heels slow her down. She reaches out behind her blindly — and she feels his hand grasp onto hers a moment later.

They rush to their seats before the lights dim.

 

 

  
She started inviting him to these things more earnestly after the second or third time she took him to one of these. It was under the guise of networking, making new contacts, and free food. Free food is a good way to motivate him. There was a pre-concert before the concert. And she remembers that he was very awkward and stiff and nervous — because, he told her, he just did not have any experience or any sort of reference point, being in places like this. He told her he never feels like he comes close to belonging in places like this. There was a quartet performing during the reception, and she remembers him telling her that he doesn’t get classical music. She told him that technically, it is not from the Classical period. She remembers telling him it is from the Baroque period — and she did it kind of carelessly and it was only after she corrected him and he said, “Oh,” that she realized that she was a bit of an asshole and it wasn’t necessary to correct him when he was already anxious.

He was quiet and introspective after that. Until they went into the concert hall, waited for the lights to dim, and then there was a wall of sound that throbbed and pulsed out its aliveness. She remembers leaning over to look at his face and being surprised by what she saw. He was staring at the stage and his jaw was clenched and there were tears in his eyes.

That night, he made her realize that she takes a lot of things for granted. Later, he would ask her about the period. And later, she would tell him that it was from the Romantic period.

That is why she invites him to these things.

 

 

  
After the concert, as they go underground to the garage to retrieve her car, she starts pulling pins out of her hair because they are itching her scalp — and she raps her knuckles on his shoulder. He looks at her, and she says, “Let’s do that thing that kids do on prom night.”

He looks at her strangely. He says, “You wanna really quickly lose our virginity in the back of someone’s mom’s van?” He gives her a sardonic smile.

She cackles — that is really the description for the sound coming out of her — and she punches an elevator button. She says, “Is that what you did on prom night?”

“Oh my God, _no,”_ he says. “I didn’t go to prom. I didn’t want to have to ask someone.”

“I lost my virginity long before prom night,” she says as the elevators open again. She met Aggo when she was sixteen. She lost her virginity to him six months after meeting him. “Let’s go somewhere casual and silly and fun in our pretty clothes,” she says, going back to her original idea — doing that thing that kids do.

 

 

  
“Oh my God,” she says, when they walk into the bowling alley. Her cream dress is actually glowing fluorescent blue-green, from the black light and the disco lights. They are way old here and way overdressed. Pop dance music for the much younger set is making the walls shake.

“Wow,” Grey says. “So okay, this is what cosmic bowling is.”

“Oh my God,” Dany repeats. “I love it.”

 

 

  
They bowl for a couple of hours. She sucks at it and her dress is tight around her thighs, so it’s hard to properly bowl. He is naturally very good at it. He tells her he’s never bowled before in his life, but it’s fairly intuitive. She tells him that he is just rubbing his athleticism in her face. There are moments during the night when she looks at him — sees him in a certain light or sees a certain expression from him — and she wonders what would happen if she kisses him again.

She doesn’t though. Instead, she drives him back to his apartment and she waves goodbye to him as the gates close in front of him.

 

 

  
Drogo and Missandei have a pretty low-key night together. They both purposely make it a point not to talk about Grey or Dany, so they end up talking about work for hours — until that topic is exhausted, and then they just resort to talking about the good ol’ days in a really bland and nondescript way.

Honestly, they are both distracted. Drogo is distracted because Dany has not texted for him to come over lately — he never texts her because to do so would feel too vulnerable and she would probably think it was too disgustingly clingy. Missandei is distracted because she is really convinced that Grey and Dany are off having photogenic sex together, and it makes her insides clench rather painfully just thinking about it — but she keeps thinking about it because she and Grey work together now. So she must condition herself, and she must learn to tolerate this. She wonders if he touches Dany the way he used to touch her — hard and then soft. She wonders if he still looks beautiful and pained when he fucks. She wonders if he tells Dany that he loves her right after he comes.

She tells Drogo she’s going to get them another round of drinks. She waits at the bar top and she catches a man staring at her. She says hello to him, and then he smiles and gets in closer. He asks her what her name is.

And then she collects their drinks and she _hightails_ it out of there. Because where she was starting to go with that felt disingenuous.

Drogo drives her home an hour later. He gently murmurs that with her new money, she can afford a nicer place — a place to herself — if she wanted. And maybe a vehicle — if she wanted.

She gives him a kiss on the cheek goodnight — she feels gross from the three drinks she nursed over the course of the night — and she hurries into her basement apartment, locking the door behind her. She briefly considers masturbating, but she doesn’t think it’s a good idea to do that when she’s thinking a lot about Grey having sex with another woman. Instead she just falls asleep in her bed hugging a pillow to her chest.

A few miles away, Drogo rolls his eyes at himself as he quickly types out a text and hits send. He thinks that maybe his sister is right. Maybe he lets this keep happening to him because he does not think he deserves better. He doesn’t think anything will come of the text — but then his phone buzzes with a response.

Jhiqui shows up at his door half an hour later. She’s grinning at him. He pulls her body to his and he starts kissing her as he shoves his door shut.

 

 

  
On Monday morning, Missandei is forcefully cheerful. She puts her best and brightest face forward. She says hello to him when she arrives at quarter to eight. Grey’s been consistently surprised that she gets to the office that early because he does not really remember her being a morning person. She does not ask him about his weekend. In fact, she is resolved to just not ask about his personal life because she would just rather not know.

 

 

 

So the first month of work flies by — and the learning curve is a bit steep. She makes a mistake that costs five grand and feels terrible about it. Neither Grey nor Drogo really pay attention or care about that, but she punishes herself enough for the both of them. In the first month, she has a few interpersonal issues with Yoren — namely he asks her out and she has to tell him no. She has a personal rule now. She does not date coworkers ever.

She spends part of her weekends hanging around her brother’s store, helping him clean out his inventory room because she is bored. She sometimes visits used car lots to test and see if she feels secure enough in her job that she might want to splurge on a new-old car. She doesn’t buy a car in that first month.

She downloads a dating app on one of the Saturday nights, because she’s drinking a bottle of wine by herself in her apartment, and she just wants to see what it’s like. She gets a message from one creep telling her he wants to lick her titties like they are fudgesicles, and she immediately deletes that shit right off her phone. She does not know how people find other people to date anymore.

She goes to a sports match in an arena — she refuses to learn the details — with Yara and her brother, who actually manages to leave the house without having a panic attack. And Missy finds that she actually really hates watching sports. She spends the entire time scared to death that a ball is going to fly into her face at a million miles an hour and _kill her._

She watches a fair bit of TV. She has the leisure time — just like Drogo promised — to do stuff like keep up with TV and read books now. She watches TV more than she reads books.

 

 

  
During Missandei’s first month of work, Drogo is gone for a week of it because he is working in Pentos. He doesn’t tell Dany he is away, but maybe she magically knows because she does not contact him at all. When he gets back, Jhiqui wants to know if he wants to come out to her nameday dinner with some of her friends. It sounds kind of serious and pressurized to him — it sounds relationshippy — and he only thinks this because he is really bad at relationships — so while he told her he’d make an appearance at her nameday, he pretty much gets drunk and blows her off because he is an immature piece of shit sometimes. She ends up chewing him out over text message because she cannot reach him any other way. She tells him that he really needs to get over himself and not treat people like this anymore. He is hungover and ashamed when he reads that text message. He apologizes to her over text, and he kind of starts to make up an excuse — but then he deletes it because he thinks that he lies too much sometimes.

Dany finally does reach out to him a week after that. She offers him no explanation for the long bout of radio silence. She just takes off her clothes in front of him and climbs on top of him. She tells him not to move. She tells him not to touch her. She tells him to just stay still. And so he does — he just lies there despondently waiting for her to get angry with him. She actually does not get angry with him, and it makes him wonder if this really was all she’s been wanting from him, this whole time.

 

 

  
During Missandei’s first month, Grey and Jaime take about ten yoga classes together and they both really, really enjoy it. Jaime is generally too tired these days to spend much time fixating on the state of his friendship with Grey — he knows that Grey prefers Drogo over most everyone else and _whatever,_ Jaime prefers pork over chicken and it doesn’t mean that pork is better than chicken except that pork is most definitely better than chicken. But Jaime is honestly too tired to raise much of a stink about it. He’s just looks forward to making incremental improvements as his body and prosthesis continue adapting to the motions and progressions.

Grey gets the most sleep he’s gotten in _years,_ during the first month. He’s been letting his body shut down and wake up naturally and he has marveled over how being well-rested has affected his mood for the better. The stuff that he used to find labor intensive — like going through invoices — is not that bad when he does it on a full night’s rest. He finds that he is _smarter_ with more rest, his brain is sharper and quicker and more creative. He finds that he is more _congenial_ on sleep. On sleep, he snaps at the staff less and he sometimes even lingers and jokes around with them for a little bit. His smile is sometimes immense and bright and wide — that it basically messes with everyone’s head. When he laughs at something Meera says in a staff meeting he is allowed to attend, she gets frazzled and starts stuttering and flushing red. When he tells Pyp that Pyp has been doing a good job, Pyp is rendered speechless for a moment and then claims that he has to go run to the vending machine down the hall because there’s a vending machine emergency happening.

Grey and Missandei work fairly closely because they have to. She is revamping the entire process in which they track and manage projects and he has like — _so many_ opinions on it, some of which are picky and personal preference and others are insights that are important and she actually needs to hear them because he’s been doing this work for a while.

Grey does not realize how much his mood has affected everyone. He assumes that the lightness that he feels from every direction is coming from inside of him — it actually doesn’t occur to him that other people are also responding to it. He thinks that fucking sleep is _amazing._ He thinks having free time to dick around with concept work is a luxury he has previously never had. He is so preoccupied with how amazing it feels to be doing some of the best work he’s done in years — it is astounding. It feels substantial and weighty in his hands. He doesn’t know how he has _lived_ without this. This is as close to how he thought this would feel in his dreams, but it is _real._ He hangs out in Drogo’s office for long minutes, watching and helping Drogo make the perfect playlist for work, as he tells Drogo that they need to do something together again. He tells Drogo that the Summer Isles was just a taste, but they need to do something together. It’s been _so long_ since they’ve worked together on a project intimately.

Drogo _cracks up_ at the use of the word ‘intimately.’

 

 

  
“Okay,” he says, while they are in the studio. He sets a timer on his phone for thirty minutes and he props it up against his cold mug of coffee so that she can see it count down. “You have ten minutes to prep me and set up, and then you have about twenty minutes before the light shifts and becomes noticeably different.”

He’s teaching her how he likes to tape quick and dirty interviews — which is actually something she knows how to do, but it’s been a while and sometimes his needs are so specific.

He’s looking at her expectantly. And then after a moment, he says, “Okay, time is ticking.”

“Oh!” she says in understanding. “You want to roleplay! Oh, okay.”

 

 

  
After they run through it, he tells her that she’s over-preparing. There are too many questions and too much explanation and too much set up.

This is actually how she always does this and she’s been doing this for _years,_ so she’s a little perturbed that he’s talking about it like it’s wrong, but she listens to him anyway. He tells her that the key is to do the prep, but to make it feel really casual so that people won’t get psyched out and will stay relaxed-looking on camera. He tells her that the idea is to foster an environment of spontaneity.

He is talking to her like it’s her first day ever. So she says, “Hey, I don’t want to be combative or defensive, but I have a lot of experience interviewing people on camera. And I have my own way of doing it. And I feel like it elicits good results.”

“I’m just giving you a few pointers. You can take them or leave them.”

“I totally appreciate that,” she says. “Hypothetically, could I give _you_ some pointers?”

“What?” He blinks in surprise. And then he stares are her. “You have notes for me?”

“Well, actually no, not really,” she says. “But that’s because I’ve worked with you before, and I know what you’re about, and I just trust you to get it done however you get it done.”

“Well yeah, Missandei. I understand that. But we can’t just let the kids run around doing whatever the fuck they feel like —”

“I’m not one of the kids though.”

He pauses again, tensing up a little bit. He says, “I know you’re not.”

“I _really_ appreciate the attention and your expertise — like, you don’t even know. I know you’re super busy, and you could be doing a bunch of other things. And you’re really cool with process and letting me come in and do what needs to be done with that, but sometimes, when it comes to the creative, you talk to me like you don’t trust me. Like, you don’t trust me to have good taste.”

“No,” he says, shaking his head. He means that this is not the case at all.

“I know you want things to be perfect. So I get it. But I _know_ how to use a camera. I _know_ how to time an interview. I _know_ how to talk to people so that they will say the _right_ things in the _right_ way. I’m actually like, really good at it.”

“I know you are,” he says softly. And then he sighs.

 

 

  
Toward the end of the work day, he beckons her into his office by sending her an email asking her to stop by when she has a moment. It is weird. He doesn’t realize how much it freaks people out to be summoned via cryptic email. She shows up in his doorway expecting to be reprimanded or something.

Instead, he says, “Hey, do you have plans after work today?”

Now she’s expecting him to ask her to work late, which is fine because these requests are actually fairly rare. She says, “No, I’m open. What’s up?”

“Uh, do you wanna grab dinner or drinks?” He’s nervously frowning. “Um, we never got to celebrate your first week, so maybe we can celebrate your first month. And um, I probably should apologize for, you know, all the times in the past month I talked to you like you are a child.”

“You want to eat with me?” Oh my God, she sounds so pathetic and moony, and it’s like no one ever asks her if she wants to have dinner. And this is partly kind of true.

“Yeah,” he says, still frowning _a lot._ “It’ll be fun.”

“Okay, yeah,” she says. “Sure. That would be nice.”

“Can you do me a favor? Can you not tell the staff? They already talk so much shit and I don’t — it’s none of their business.”

“Okay,” she says. “I won’t tell.”

 

 

 


	18. Missy has a new friend!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Missandei and Grey have dinner together. Grey drinks to cope. Does not work well.

 

 

 

  
She keeps her eyes furtively trained on him — but she appears as if she’s looking at her computer screen — as he walks by taking a sip from his water bottle. He’s on his phone again, talking through his wireless headset. His phone is actually in his pocket. This is something she has observed about him. He likes to talk and walk. Sometimes he can manage to talk and work, if the work is fairly mechanical and repetitive. He doesn’t like to take calls on the landline, stuck at his desk. He keeps his cell phone number private by patching the office line directly to his cell at certain hours of the day. And he takes a lot of calls throughout the day, sometimes ones lasting for upwards of an hour. A lot of their clients are a few hours behind on the west coast. Others are a number of hours ahead in Essos.

“Oh, yeah?” he says softly into the air — his earpiece likely catching his words — as he paces back and forth a little bit in the open space in the middle of the room. “Shut up. All I hear is that you just love me so much that you cannot even stand it sometimes.” He laughs suddenly, probably because Dany or whoever said something hilarious. “Okay,” he says. There is a pause. He says, “Okay,” again. Honestly — she does not know how anyone ever gets anything done when Grey is having a phone call in front of them. “Hey,” he says. “Are you gonna make it back home in time for dinner? Wanna meet up and eat tonight?”

She flushes. Because she’s assuming that he has probably totally forgotten that _they_ are grabbing a bite. Or maybe he assumed that he’d just grab a drink with her, one quick drink before he goes off to dinner. Or maybe he thinks that it’d be fun to invite his girlfriend to dinner so that she can be a third wheel. Or maybe Missy’s _really bad_ at eavesdropping and she just didn’t hear right.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay.” He pauses. “Oh bummer. Okay. Okay. No, don’t come over tonight.” He pauses again. “Because. Because I don’t need a reason. Well, I want to go to bed at a reasonable hour, that’s why. Okay, sounds good. I’ll just see you tomorrow or Monday or something.” He pauses. “Okay. No, I’m not gonna say it to you over the phone. ‘Cause it’s weird! Okay I love you, too. Okay, bye.”

After Grey cuts the line, Jojen asks, “Drogo still stuck in Rosby?”

“Yeah,” Grey says. “He’s being too polite, and he’s letting William art direct a little — so it’s running a little over.” William is their client representative.

“Classic,” Meera says.

“Yeah,” says Lommy. “Because being too polite is a problem that Drogo commonly has.”

 

 

Because she opted for dinner — because _the thirst_ is so fucking real for her — there’s a little bit of time that she can kill before meeting back up with him again at seven. She opts to just go home real quick to change and just to have something to do besides awkwardly hang back at the office with him, pretending to work as he actually works. She actually dressed up for work today a little bit — a modest dress and a blazer — because she likes to dress up a little bit when she has to interface with clients. She had a lot of meetings today.

She goes home to dress down, just to show herself and him that she’s not like, trying hard and stuff. She’s just like, super casual and whatever about dinner with him and just him after _years_ of not hanging out with him at all. Like, no big deal.

After she puts on a pair of jeans and a sweater, she actually pulls back the blankets on her bed and crawls in. Her bed is comfy and warm and safe. It’s a good place to think. Also, her apartment is too small for any other furniture, so her bed is the only place to hang out and have thoughts.

She’s burrowed in there with her sheet over her head as she checks the time and texts him. She’s asking him if he has an idea of where they should eat — and she’s asking him if she should meet him back at the office or if she should meet him at the restaurant?

 

 

  
There are a lot of really cool-looking restaurants in her neck of the woods that he’s been wanting to try actually, but most that come to mind are small mom and pop operations that do not have liquor licenses — probably just beer if he’s lucky. And he thinks that he really need alcohol as a crutch. Like, he needs alcohol to carry on a proper conversation, probably. He actually tried to make Drogo into his crutch — he tried to get Drogo to come to dinner. But that didn’t work out, hence Plan B.

 

 

  
He is already at the restaurant when she gets there. She generally has to travel farther than most of her friends whenever they meet up. She lives on the edge of the city where rent is affordable, and Drogo, Yara, and Obara live close to city center. Ygritte lives up north, actually kind of close to where her old house was.

He chose a trendy gastropub for dinner, which was not his style at all back in the days when she was closer to him. But people change, and maybe they come into some money and they get really into comfort food that gets dressed up, shrunken in portion size, and priced higher. Maybe he is into that kind of thing now. After all, back when she knew him better, he always wasn’t running around doing activities that required a tuxedo.

He’s at the bar with a drink in hand when she finds him. He tells her that it’s probably another ten minutes before their table frees up. That collective type of language — we, us, ours — kind of gets to her. She’s glad it’s relatively dark in the restaurant.

 

 

  
Holy shit, they have nothing to say to each other at all that isn’t work-related. They don’t appear to have many common interests and there’s no point in sharing factoids about one another because the very bizarre dynamic here is that they actually have already gone through each other’s backstory — in detail. There’s not really a new story to tell, other than stories from the five year gap. And that is still a bit of a sore spot, so yeah. There is really not much to talk about.

Like, they can’t even really talk about the food because what is there to say about the food? The shrimp and grits are just terrible, but they taste okay enough.

He’s been drinking. And so he’s been getting progressively buzzed. And actually, he’s still really tense and really blanking on what to say to her. It’s probably just as bad as it’d be if he was sober — except that he has to work a fair bit harder to pay attention to things. Like, he gets lost going to the toilets and he has to circle back and walk across her line of sight again, because he got disoriented and went in the wrong direction.

He thinks about what he would be doing if he was having dinner with Yoren or Pyp or any of the kids. He thinks that he’d just be sitting there making fun of them. And then laughing at his own jokes and having fun that way. He can’t really do that here, with her. He wouldn’t even know how and where to start — in making fun of her. Like, so she’s really intelligent and really great at her job and really thoughtful and super good-looking. All areas just _ripe_ for heckling.

He’s absently bopping his head to the music overhead, without actively realizing that he’s doing it. He’s thoughtlessly mouthing silently along to the chorus because he likes the sample.

She says, “Oh! I love this song!”

He looks startled. “Yeah?”

“Yeah! It’s on the ass mix that Drogo made me.”

“Oh,” he says. “That’s how I know this, too. Drogo and I make playlists for each other to listen to while we work.”

“Is your mix about asses, too?”

She sounds and looks way too innocent and earnest about this that it kind of makes him laugh. He covers his mouth momentarily, muffling the sound a little, before he says, “Uh, no. It’s not exclusively about asses. A lot of it is instrumental, actually.”

 

 

  
The conversation shifts from music to TV and movies — because she has been watching an _obscene_ amount of consumable content. She tells him it started with her post-firing depression as a way to just have something to focus on, and then it became something that really took on a life of its own. She watches really trashy things and also artful things every now and then. They start trading notes, comparing and contrasting what they have both seen, what they think the other should see. He starts talking about content in a way that she does not expect.

She expects him to talk about the way things are visualized and the way things look — only because this was his main vocabulary back when she was closer to him. But actually, he talks about the stories and how stories are told and which stories speak to him. She finds that he views things more holistically now.

He’s moving his head along to the song overhead again — when she points this out to him. It makes him kind of laugh in reflex. He shrugs. He says, “I think that, for me, it’s not really that I prefer a particular medium. I just think visualizing things is just easiest for me because — you know —” He loosely splays out his fingers and holds out his hands, hovering them over the table, rolling his wrists in time with the music. “Talking and verbalizing is hard for me sometimes. That’s partly why I was always generally so impressed with you.” Upon her surprised recoil of skepticism, he laughs again. He says, “Like, you’re not just good at expression and telling stories in one language — you’re good at it in many, many languages. And you just pick up new languages like it’s nothing. Like, that’s crazy to me.”

 

 

  
She knows that their time together is winding down when she catches him suppressing a yawn and sneaking a glance at his phone screen to check the time. She says, “It’s late, huh?”

“It’s ten,” he says sheepishly.

“You wake up early.”

 

 

  
He tells her that his apartment is within walking distance of the restaurant, so he’s just going to walk home. He asks her if she feels okay walking to the train station by herself, or if she’d like for him to walk her there.

It actually feels like a dilemma, whether or not she wants to really milk this, whether or not she wants to let him be chivalrous, whether or not she’s gonna buy herself a little bit more time to gather up the courage to say something about how much she enjoyed hanging out with him tonight and how much she really, really wishes that they can do this again sometime. Like, it doesn’t have to be a regular thing, but maybe on special occasions.

She tells him, “I’m good walking to the station by myself.”

“Okay,” he says. “Okay,” he repeats. “Can you text me when you get home though? So I know you got there in one piece?”

She’s pretty much dying. Over that. God.

She agrees that she will send him a text when she gets home.

 

 

  
He feels nervous and anxious, and he kind of regrets not just being an asshole and insisting that he walk her ass to the train station, waiting with her there until she gets on the train. But . . . she doesn’t belong to him anymore. So he really has no right to be telling her what he will do for her. Instead, he just waves goodbye to her — because he doesn’t think he should try and hug her — and he starts walking home.

He gets there within twenty minutes. He pulls his wallet out of his pocket and drops it on his side table. He toes off his shoes and carries them into the bedroom. He hangs up his jacket and pulls off his clothes, throwing them in the hamper. He delays the shower he’s planning on taking because he’s waiting for her text to come in. He generally lies down naked on his bed and wonders what the fuck he is doing and what the fuck he must be thinking. He’s an idiot because she works for him now, and she is kind of really lovely. She is kind of really great and not at all a fucking terrible and heartless monster like what he was hoping she’d be.

He generally kills time by messing around on his phone. He goes on his social media accounts and looks at what Meera has been posting as him — she masquerades as him because she volunteered and has a weird interest in this sort of thing. Holy shit, there are so many pictures of him looking pensive on his Instagram. He’s going to need to talk to her about that.

When Missandei’s text finally comes through — forty minutes after they parted — it’s simultaneously a relief as it is nerve-wracking. Because she wrote him that she made it home in one piece. And he writes back: _Prove it_.

And after he’s already hit send, he’s like, what the fuck!

And before he can obsess over it too much, his phone buzzes and a picture of her appears on his screen. She’s smiling and flashing the peace sign — and he’s trying to get a proper look at the background, to see what kind of environment she’s living in these days — and also to avoid letting himself stare at her face too much like a psycho.

He writes back: _There you are._

She asks him if she also gets a picture of him as proof that he made it home safe.

He tells her that she will not be getting a picture. He plays it off like he’s arrogant and annoying — he tells her that he doesn’t give away free pictures anymore. The truth is that he does not have any clothes on. And he is pretty sure sending a picture of himself in this state — he means shirtless and not like, full-frontal — completely sends the wrong message. And is probably sexual harassment.

She tells him he’s being a bit paternalistic.

He asks her if she really thinks that’s really true.

Which sounds entirely like a serious question — and it probably is — so her text responses start getting lengthy. He starts typing fast and quick responses, riddled with typos — some of which end up confusing her more than they do clarify.

After a few minutes of back-and-forth, his phone actually starts ringing. He manages to be kind of surprised that it’s her name flashing on his screen. He picks up, and he says, “Hey.”

 

 

  
Missy thinks that this is shaping up to be the best night _ever._ She swishes her legs around underneath her blankets as she creates a more comfortable position for herself, as the sound of his voice continues flowing into her ear. Her eyes are tearing up — not because of what he is saying — he’s actually talking about camera specs, of all things. Her eyes are tearing up because she’s been silently yawning and trying to not fall asleep because she wants this to last forever.

 

 

  
When the line appears to go dead for a few seconds, he says, “Missandei? Are you still there?”

“Huh?” she says, voice soft. “Yeah, I’m here.”

“Oh,” he says, understanding. “You were sleeping. Look, I’ll let you go.”

“No,” she says breathily. “I want to keep talking.”

“We can talk later. You should go to sleep.”

 _“Nooo,”_ she whines. “I don’t want to hang up.”

“Well, I don’t know what to say. It’s really late, and I think I heard you snoring.”

 

 

  
On Monday morning, she’s in the studio — a small annex around the corner from their office in the same building — and she’s fiddling around with the height of the studio lights and setting up a camera. Missy’s trying to take a real quick headshot of herself because Meera wants it for the company website. She’s in the midst of linking up a tablet to the DSLR so that she can control it remotely when he walks into the studio.

The hairs on the back of her neck stand up as he nears her. But she generally ignores him and she keeps fiddling with camera settings.

His arms are crossed over his chest as he says, “The lights are too high. You probably need to lower that one about a foot. And I would also set up a reflector over here.”

Her face breaks out in a stressed flushed as she drags her face away from the tablet screen to look at him. He’s staring at her all seriously, and she starts to say, “Well —”

And then he cracks up. He just full-on laughs in her face, drops his arms, and just kind of elegantly takes a step backwards as she realizes that he’s messing with her. Her mouth drops open, and she raises her hand for a slap, trying to bring it down on his shoulder. He neatly dodges the hit, still laughing.

“Oh my God!” she whines. “You jerk!”

“Oh my God, your face!” he says, still laughing.

“You’re such a dick! You know I get insecure about taking photos!” She frowns. She means both having her picture taken and also being behind the camera, especially in front of him. “Do you think the lights really need to be adjusted?”

He shrugs, still trying to tamp down on his chuckles. “Nah,” he says. “It’s just personal preference. Your lights are fine.”

“Okay,” she says doubtfully.

And then they just stand there, her kind of miserably. He is still very amused with himself.

“Grey!” she says. “Can you please leave? I don’t want to do this under your scrutiny.”

“I’m not scrutinizing!” he says, holding up his hands to show her he’s for real. “I’m just standing here!”

“It’s really hard to do this sort of stuff in front of you. Like, it’s really intimidating.”

“Oh, I _know,”_ he says, briefly grinning. “But you’re gonna need to learn to get over it. I can’t always leave the room whenever you’re working on something.”

He’s right. She sighs and turns her attention back down to the tablet, zooming in on her face and all of her pores, sharpening them so that she can see every little hole. She looks straight ahead at the camera lens and she quickly stretches her face out so it’s not so stiff.

“Are you gonna smile? We’re all smiling just a little bit on the website. Like this.” He demonstrates for her.

Just as she says, “You _bitch,”_ he spontaneously reaches out and presses the shutter button. The lights all throb a bit brighter as machinery clicks and whirs — and her face pops up on her tablet. It’s a funny face with her brows furrowed and her expression really displeased.

She flips the tablet around and shows him. “This is really great.

“Test photo, man,” he says. “But I dunno. I dunno how you can really improve on that. I say you send it to Meera and tell her to run it.”

The pressure in her body finally releases — in a laugh. She shakes her head at him as she giggles and looks up at the ceiling. He reaches out and manually hits the shutter button again, sending another picture to the tablet. And she looks really awesome and adorable and cute and her hair looks amazing. _Great._

 

 

 

 

 


	19. Drogo's sisters come to town

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Drogo's sisters come and visit him for the weekend. One of them is pretty cool. The other is a terror.

 

 

 

  
Daenerys refuses to come to him at eight o’clock. She insists on getting there at eight-thirty. And he’s like, oh, okay? Sure? What’s the big fucking deal and what is the point of the fucking power play?

She shows up fifteen minutes late — actually because she’s been tied up at work and she’s been fighting to get the fuck on outta there so that she can see him. But he never really perceives that she puts in any effort whatsoever for him. He finds himself looking at the clock in anticipation and he knows that _that bitch_ has won.

She smells like the wind — kind of cold and fresh — as she shuts his front door and lightly jogs up to him. She’s smiling, and she actually looks like she’s happy to see him. She reaches up to grasp the back of his neck, to pull him down to her mouth. The kiss is immediately hard and sexy and all tongue. He tries not to let their mouths break contact as he starts dragging her up the stairs.

He throws her on the bed. Then he starts pulling off his own clothes. Then he starts helping her take off hers. She slaps his hands away and she tells him that she’ll do it. She mutters that he’s too rough with her clothes, and her clothes are expensive. They are probably both remembering the time he accidentally ripped her skirt at the slit.

When she’s naked, he tries to kiss his way down her body, but she actually buries her entire hand in his hair like a complete and total hypocrite, and she _drags_ his head back up. She kisses him again, as she parts her legs and nudges herself closer to his dick.

She makes him so bad at sex. She makes him so selfish at sex. Sex with her has been like one repetitive one-night stand. Sex with her is so limiting, in certain ways. She always dictates where he’s allowed to touch her. She always dictates where and when they can have sex. She even sometimes dictates what he’s allowed to say during sex. She doesn’t like dirty talk it seems, so the sex is largely non-verbal. She doesn’t let him go down on her ever.

He fucks her for a very short amount of time before she pushes him back out of her. He watches mutely as she flips herself over and gets to her hands and knees, as she presents her backside to him.

He says, “Oh. Okay,” because he’s a team player and he’s a good sport. He gets to his knees. He lets out a heavy groan as he gets himself back inside of her.

 

 

  
After he finishes with a shiver, he presses his hand to her butt cheek — kind of for balance as the fingers on his other hand pinches the edge of the condom. He pulls out of her in one smooth motion, pats her on the bottom, and then he walks into the bathroom to clean himself off.

He comes back with a dampened green microfiber wash cloth, and he tosses it at her. It lands on the bed, next to her thigh. He watches as she grabs it and quickly wipes herself down in between her legs before she absently tosses it his way again. He catches it mid-air.

By the time he gets back from the second trip to the bathroom, he sees that she’s pulled on her panties and is currently working on her bra.

He tilts his head. He says, “Can I ask you something without you getting mad?”

“No, Drogo,” she says, “You can’t.” And then she looks at him and gives him a half-smile.

He returns it. He asks his question anyway. He says, “Are your . . . boobs different?”

She looks down at her breasts, encased in her nude-colored bra. She shoves her arms into the sleeves of her blouse and tugs the flaps together, buttoning it from top to bottom. She dully says, “Oh, you can tell? I was hoping it’d be subtle.”

He gives her a perplexed look. He walks into his closet to grab a pair of sweats, putting them on before he goes back to the conversation, leaning his butt against his dresser. He says, “It _is_ subtle. Honestly, I think if you hadn’t acted all weird about sex, I might not have noticed.”

She winces, kind of reaching over to cup herself gently. She admits, “My body is still a little sore from the surgery.”

“Okay,” he says, slowly rubbing his hands together. “Why though? I don’t mean why is your body sore — I mean why get surgery at all? You looked fine before.”

She smooths out imaginary wrinkles from her skirt and bends over to reach for the heeled booties that she had haphazardly kicked off when the sex started in earnest. She pulls the shoe onto her foot and zips one up before repeating the motion with the other shoe. When she stands up, she’s gained a few inches, but the top of her head doesn’t even make it to his chin. She tells him, “For the same reason most women like me do it. So I fill out dresses a little bit better. Because it was suggested it to me. So that there are no distracting human quirks for people to notice. So I look good in a swimsuit.”

“Dany,” he says, walking up to her, carefully putting his hands on her shoulders. He bends his knees so he can look her directly in the face. “If it hurts to be touched right now — we don’t have to have sex.”

“But then I wouldn’t get to see you,” she says.

He says something that he thinks is very, very obvious. But this woman is real fucking stupid when it comes to normal human shit sometimes. He says, “You know that we can see each other without having to have sex.”

“Like what would we even do together!” she says, suddenly exasperated and passionate about this — as if he’s touched on a nerve and she’s been holding this frustration in for a while now. “It’s not like I can eat with you! It’s not like I can drink alcohol with you! I have to save my cheat days, Drogo!”

“Hey, I have more than two hobbies,” he says, frowning now. He is realizing — not for the first time, but perhaps much more concretely now — that this woman really compartmentalizes her life a whole fucking shit ton. This sort of thing is hard for him to identify because it’s totally opposite of his style — his tendency to mash all of the components of his life together, to blur the professional with the personal. “What do you typically do at this time of night when you’re by yourself?”

“I work out.”

“Oh,” he says. “So I work out, too. We can work out together?”

She scoffs in disgust at the idea. She says, “Drogo, would you get a fucking clue! Obviously, my workout regimen does not involve bench pressing small trucks at the fucking neighborhood gym that smells like body odor!” She rolls her eyes at him.

“Damn!” he shouts back. “Why you so angry all the time! Also, what the fuck! You think all I do is bench? God, that’s so fucking off-base. Like, fucking check out my legs, man! Leg days are so fucking important. I ain’t one of those guys that are only stacked up top! I alternate strength-training with cardio, you bitch!”

 

 

  
He and Dany don’t really get to try doing something besides sex. Anyway, by the time their schedules free up, she’ll already be mostly healed anyway, so it’ll be moot.

His sisters Nessi and Sona come visit on an extended weekend and take over his entire apartment with all of their clothes and their shit, on very short notice. When he picks them up at the airport, he pinches Sona on the arm and he tells her that she’s gained a little bit of chub, which garners a real stink eye. He tells her that her edgy and short haircut really makes her look mannish. That’s a joke. She actually looks great to him. But he likes to give her shit. She is sexually ambiguous — she refuses to answer any of their rude questions about why she isn’t coming out of the fucking closet to them and introducing them to her girlfriend already. She has not brought anyone by to meet the family since high school. Back then, it was a twerpy nerd she used to chill with a lot. He was a guy.

He doesn’t worry about Sona. She takes care of _business._ She gives people the _business_ if they step outta line. He worries about their idiot baby sister Nessi, though.

Nessi is an esthetician who also has a really popular YouTube channel that she is apparently trying to parlay into a full-time career. He doesn’t get it, but he might be a tad too old to get it. Nessi has money somehow. Sometimes he’s afraid that she has money because she’s a high-priced escort, because one of his friends — Curtie — planted that idea into Drogo’s brain one night after a few beers. He told Curtis to just shut the fuck up because that’s Drogo’s baby sister. But after that, Drogo keeps obsessively wondering how his idiot baby sister can afford to travel as much as she does on her fucking beauty school salary. She tells him she has sponsors. He doesn’t understand her business at all, so he constantly wonders if sponsors is actually a code word for clients or johns or fucking sex traffickers.

They can’t talk about this very much though. Because they fight — just horrible, emotional fights where accusations of wrong-doing get thrown around like confetti.

 

 

  
Sona and Nessi haven’t seen his new apartment yet, so they run around it opening up all the doors and looking through all of his shit. He keeps hearing their pounding footsteps running all over the place before he hears one of them scream, “Oh my God!” all randomly over what they have encountered. The first time Nessi did that, he thought she had fallen and was hurt or something, so he rushed over to where she was.

She was in his bathroom, staring up at the ceiling. He’s on the top floor. So there is a skylight. She was staring at that.

It’s a trip for everyone — that he ended being their mother’s most conventionally successful child. It shocked everyone — including him — because he was constantly fighting hard not to fail all of his non-arty classes in school. Their mom was constantly getting calls over disciplinary issues when it came to him. For years, it seemed like he was working on a cruise ship for moderate pay — just constantly away and doing his job in a t-shirt and jeans.

 

 

  
Sona wants to see his new office space more than Nessi does, so they stop over real quick after lunch. They make a ton of noise before getting to the front door — so the staff is not all that surprised that Drogo has shown up on his day off.

Drogo introduces his sisters to the staff real quick, as the staff tries not to stare too hard at Nessi. Because she is fucking ridiculous and is dressed like she’s ready for the club — not like she’s in the middle of an office building in the former industrial area of King’s Landing. She seats herself on a window sill and takes a few selfies as he says, “You’re backlit.”

She figures that out for herself soon enough. She hands her phone to Sona — who is ever-suffering, but who is used to this. Sona gets low to the ground and takes a few pictures of Nessi next to a random computer monitor.

“You should have Drogo take some pictures of you,” Missandei says, walking up to them with a smile, watching Nessi pose.

“No, I don’t like the way he takes pictures of me,” Nessi says, popping out her chest a little bit harder. “They’re so . . . ugh.” Nessi does not expand on that. Instead, she adds, “Sona does a much better job.”

He knows what she means though. She sees a lot of flaws in his photos of her. She is always complaining that he captured her cellulite or made her nose look really fat. He knows that his pictures of her are just pictures of how she looks. He thinks his sister is beautiful — he thinks all of his sisters are beautiful. But he’s biased, and she doesn’t like the kind of photos he takes.

Missandei kind of laughs in bewilderment. She reaches out to briefly hold his hand, an action that Sona notices.

 

 

  
Nessi invites his entire staff out to go dancing with them tonight. He does not think that’s cool or professional — but he doesn’t uninvite them, either. He figures that most of them won’t show up.

When Grey gets back to the office from a shoot — he takes one look at Nessi and he says, “Oh no,” and he actually takes a few steps backwards, toward the door again. It makes Drogo want to fucking crack up. Instead, he crosses his arms over his chest and just settles in for the show.

 

 

  
“Oh my _Goddd,”_ Nessi says, when they are back in Drogo’s car, on the way to the city center to do some shopping. “He is _hot_ as _fuck._ Is he single right now?”

Nessi met Grey a few years ago when she last visited. Drogo took her to a party of a friend and Grey was there. Unbeknownst to Drogo, they had a conversation. Grey thought she was pretty. He was drinking. They drunkenly made out. And then Grey learned that she was really chatty and really, really annoying. And then he learned that she is Drogo’s sister. And he’s been avoiding her ever since.

Drogo does not care that much. He loves his sister, but he knows that Nessi is really, really annoying. He also thinks that she can do far worse than Grey. Drogo actually likes that she’s crushing on a guy with a job, who has not served any jail time, and who has never been addicted to drugs. He thinks that Nessi’s infatuation with Grey can be a good thing for her.

“Yeah, man,” Drogo says. “He’s totally single! And sometimes, he brings you up in conversation.” Technically, Grey brings her up as a point of comparison. He sometimes says stuff about how a woman is creeping him out like how Nessi creeps him out. Drogo knows that Grey is too polite and too nice to ever say this shit to Drogo’s sister’s face, though.

“What! Really! He talks about me?”

“Yeah, man!”

 

 

  
As Nessi bounces from store to store with Drogo’s credit card, Drogo and Sona sit in a quad sipping coffee next to a water fountain. She didn’t want to buy anything, but Drogo forced her to get something — a few pairs of running socks that he paid for because he needs to feel useful and like he’s taking care of them even though they are all self-sufficient adults now. He bought her the coffee, too. He always insists on paying for everything when they come visit — and also when he visits them. He might actually be partly to blame for Nessi’s nuttiness. Nessi is the youngest — the baby. She had the least amount of time with their dad, so she’s had the least of his influence. She is relatively unencumbered and it’s pretty hard to get her down. Her belief in herself is immense. Her lack of self-doubt is striking.

And she is also always looking for a man to take care of her — probably because her real father has been absent for most of her entire life. And probably because her father figure — her big brother — has had a hard time letting her make mistakes and letting her suffer so she can learn.

“Who’s that pretty woman, in your office?”

“Man, you trollin’ for a date?” Drogo immediately throws back. She shakes her head at him. And then he laughs, and he says, “And you gotta narrow it down. All the women in my office are pretty.”

“The darker, older one,” Sona says. “Obviously I’m talking about her.”

“Ah, Missandei.”

“Yes, her. What’s her story?”

 

 

  
Drogo laughs when Sona tells him that he should get out of his abusive relationship with the celebrity, and he should be in a relationship with a nice and normal woman like Missandei — and why not Missandei?

There are _so many_ reasons, but he opts for the very obvious one that require no further contextualization or explanation. He says, “She works for me. It’s such a dumb idea to date employees, man.”

He skips over the part about her being one of his closest friends. He skips over the part where he’s known her for many, many years, and in that time, he has figured out that they would not be good together in a romantic way. He has figured — from watching Grey — that a surefire way to lose her as a friend is to mess with her romantically. He has also decided that it’s a really surefire way to lose Grey, too — if he were to try and mess around with Missandei. Dany is one thing. But Missandei is another. There are many reasons why Drogo does not go there. Besides — Dany isn’t that bad. Dany isn’t terrible.

 

 

  
Dany surprises him — and maybe not in a very good way. She texts him and tells him that she has moved a bunch of stuff around and she will pay for it later dearly — but she has tonight free. She is wondering if he’d like to work out together. And he knows that “working out” is not a euphemism for sex, because Dany doesn’t play those kind of word games. She doesn’t play coy ever. She really means she wants to exercise.

He texts her back, and he reluctantly tells her that he can’t. He’s busy because his sisters are in town.

Sona catches him paying really close attention to his texting. She can recognize the signs of his anxiety. She asks, “Who you talkin’ to, big brother?”

He glowers at her.

She says, “You should invite her out with us. I would like to meet her.”

 

 

 

 

 


	20. Grey gets smacked in the face

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The title of this chapter says it all really. Grey gets smacked in the face.

 

 

 

  
Drogo tells Sona to not refer to him Dany in a “together” kind of way in front of other people. Because most people do not know about it, and they’d like to keep it discreet.

Sona is like, so _unimpressed_ with him. She says, “Oh, you mean _she’d_ like to keep it discreet. Because she’s _ashamed_ of you. God, this keeps getting _better_ and _better.”_

“Shut up.”

 

 

  
Grey knows that Tormund is in town because Brienne casually mentioned it on a call that he had with her earlier in the week. This is why Grey calls up Jaime and tells Jaime to take a break from his sad life of responsibility and to come through Drogo’s thing at Drogo’s apartment. Grey does not tell Jaime about the dancing — because Jaime really, really hates clubs and he hates young people. Grey figures that will just be a happy surprise. Grey appeals to Jaime’s savior complex by telling Jaime that Jaime would be doing Grey a huge solid by coming out tonight — because Drogo’s little sister is a fucking sexual predator and Grey needs Jaime to be a buffer — to save him from unwanted sexual advances. Also, it’ll be fun.

Just for kicks, Grey texts Tyrion and asks him if he’s wants to come by. Tyrion text back and asks Grey if he’s a fucking moron. He has a child now, so their friendship is just on standby for the next eighteen years or so.

 

 

  
He’s hanging out on Drogo’s couch with Jaime — messing around with Jaime’s new prosthetic hand. Jaime tells him that it’s been fully charged up and everything, in preparation for all of the fun they are about to have. That was a sarcastic comment because Jaime has learned about the dancing component, and he _hates it,_  but Grey is a tad more optimistic about this night than Jaime is.

When Yara gets there, she goes and grabs a beer from Drogo’s fridge before she wedges her butt in between Grey and the edge of the couch. She laughs as he throws her a dirty look and reluctantly scoots over to make more space for her. She asks him what he’s been up to, because they haven’t seen each other in about a month. She’s been traveling for work, and he’s been mired in the shit he’s usually preoccupied by. He ends up telling her about the stuff he’s been working on.

They have to press even closer to each other when more and more people start packing into Drogo’s apartment — a bunch of random friends and even a few professional acquaintances. Grey’s head ricochets backwards a little when Pyp walks by him and he does not immediately recognize Pyp. Grey catches Pyp’s attention by lightly nudging Pyp’s leg with his foot. He says, “Nice hat.”

Pyp doesn’t get that he’s being made fun of. He says, “Thanks, Grey!”

 

 

  
She was told that they were just gonna hang out at Drogo’s apartment for a little while before heading out — she was led to believe that it was just going to be a super casual thing — but she can hear music through the walls when she arrives. She doesn’t know how Drogo’s neighbors put up with this.

She tries knocking on the door a few times — and nothing happens. She’s pretty sure no one can hear her knocking, so she presses down on the latch and she gently pushes the door open. The place is _packed._ Holy shit, Drogo has _so many_ friends.

 

 

  
She finds him — or them, rather — in the middle of the living room, squished uncomfortably on the couch. Him, Drogo, Jaime, and Yara have shoved themselves together on a three-seater. As she walks up barefoot — because Drogo’s carpet is so pretty and so creamy — she catches Grey smiling at her, and it makes her feel a little sick inside. Because he’s so fucking cute.

“Whoa,” Yara says, eyes scanning up and down her body. “Look who’s bringing it tonight.”

“Too much?” she asks, looking down at the black dress. It’s stretchy. So that she can easily run around — the dancefloor and also from would-be gropers. She remembers how this sort of thing typically goes down.

“No way,” Yara says. “You are never too much.”

“Hey,” Drogo says, ejecting his body up from where it was wedged next to Jaime. “Take my seat, babe. I can stand.”

“Oh, no no. It’s fine.”

 

 

  
Jaime sighs in relief when Drogo vacates, because Drogo takes up a lot of space. Missandei’s body is diminutive in comparison. She’s pressed against Jaime’s hip and also against the arm of the couch — so Jaime is currently her only source of conversation unless she wants to be a bastard and just lean _way over_ to have a conversation with Yara and Grey.

“What’s new?” he says casually. “I heard you like your new job.”

“Oh, yeah, it’s really, really great — working with Drogo and Grey again.”

“Yeah, dude,” Jaime says. “I’m jealous.”

A glass of clear-ish honey-colored liquid gets presented to her. She looks up at Drogo’s grin. He tells her that he’s trying to be a good host in this clusterfuck. He tells her he made this especially for her, and it is special. Jaime holds up his beer bottle and he says, “Thanks,” before taking a sip from it.

 

 

  
No one really expected Dany to show up because this is not at all Dany’s scene — but show up she does. She looks kind of stunned when she sees all of them there — when she sees Missandei, Yara, and Jaime in addition to Grey. It’s unexpected, but it’s not a bad surprise. Jaime pops up after that, giving his seat to Dany. He says he’s doing it so he can stretch his legs, trying to disguise the fact that he just sort of did something nice for Dany.

Dany smells great — this is the first thing Missy notes as Dany sits down right next to her. The other things she’s noticing, but is trying not to notice is the fact that Dany leans over to hug Grey and also the way that Grey quickly pats Dany’s bare knee. Dany is whispering something into his ear — and Missy can hear him grunt out an affirmative before Missy gets another waft of Dany’s perfume.

“Hey,” Dany says softly — directing her attention to Missandei now. “How are you?”

Missy feels her body flushing. She kind of hates that she is here right now — but other than that, she’s not that bad. She kind of hates that she been crushing so hard on Dany’s boyfriend, but other than that, she’s not bad. For the record, he belonged to Missy way long before he was anyone else’s. But that probably doesn’t matter. That is probably neither here nor there. She hates that she is having such a hard time moving on from him. She says, “I’m good! How are you?”

“Pretty good, too.”

Missy thinks that of course Dany is pretty good. Dany gets to be with one of the most wonderful people ever.

 

 

  
She lightly touches his back to get his attention — in the kitchen. He looks over his shoulder and when he spots her, he grins. He fully turns around, and he lightly clinks beer bottles with her. He says, “Do you just really hate it here right now?”

“A few people keep trying to sneakily take pictures of me,” she tells him. “They actually keep trying to take pictures of me with Jaime.”

“Aw, they’re fans. And you’re a good sport.”

“No, actually, I went up to them and told them to stop it.”

He laughs.

 

 

  
She’s actually feeling pretty overwhelmed. She is naturally a bit of an introvert, so the high number of stimuli kind of makes her nervous. The number of bodies packed into Drogo’s place makes her anxious because it’s making her realize that he has an entire life that exists outside of what she sees in her limited interaction with him. He has _so many_ friends. She finds it so bizarre and so weird — to know so many people like this. Beyond Grey, she has zero real friends.

“Hey,” Drogo whispers to her. “This might be weird, but my sister wants to meet you.”

“Like, meet me? Or _meet_ me?” She’s asking him if his sister wants to meet her because his sister has seen her on TV or in a magazine — or if his sister wants to meet her because of personal reasons.

“I told her,” he says quietly. “Sorry.”

“Oh, damn,” Dany whispers back. “Since we’re talking about this — do you wanna meet my brother, too?”

“Huh?”

“That’s a joke,” Dany says flatly. “You’re never going to meet my brother.”

He doesn’t understand the joke. He doesn’t know about her relationship with her brother because she has never told him about it — so he assumes that she means that he is not qualified or not good enough to meet her brother. He doesn’t get that her brother has historically driven away friends and family and other people that she could’ve gotten close to — so that is why she generally refrains from letting the different components of her life intersect.

 

 

  
When Drogo’s little sister finally makes an appearance, nearly all of the male gazes zoom right to her. Because everyone in Drogo’s family is stupidly good looking, with overt sexual energy, too. Drogo’s little sister is all long shiny hair, boobs, and butt — and as she watches Nessi walk up to Grey to talk to him — Missy realizes that she is not unique and she is not special at all. She is not the first nor will she be the last to look at him and see that he is special. She is not the last to be attracted to his talent and the way he looks. She is not at all different from anyone else. She is like, one of his fucking groupies.

 

 

  
Grey actually shouts out, “Jaime!” as Nessi rubs his chest and tells him that he looks really nice. He shouts out Jaime’s name because he doesn’t even give a shit about how it looks and he’s so pissed that fucking Jaime is slacking. Jaime had _one_ job.

She encircles her arms around his neck. She presses her body against his. He goes rigid. She tries to sway to the music with him. He tells her to knock it off. He tells her he doesn’t want this.

She laughs — and frighteningly, it reminds him of how Drogo laughs sometimes — and she raises her face up to look at his. She tells him that she doesn’t believe what he says. She tells him that she knows that he wants her. She tells him that the last time was fun.

It was a mistake that is continuing to kick him in the ass, and one that manages to sound way more sordid than it actually was. He grabs her face to look into her eyes — because now he thinks that she is _on something._ But she thinks that he’s about to kiss her. She puckers up and she grabs his head and she yanks it down, slanting her lips over his.

 

 

  
They actually never make it to the club — so later, half of Drogo friends will text him the morning after and playfully ask him where the fuck he was. He has a reputation for being endearingly bad at keeping his word when it comes to social obligations. It’s a quality that has annoyed so many women in the past.

But he has a pretty good excuse this time. He’s still talking to Dany in the kitchen when he hears Sona shout out his name urgently. A zip of fear and panic runs up his spine as he leaves Dany and immediately follows his sister’s voice, pushing through his friends.

He’s saying, “What’s going on — what’s happening?” as he hits the living room.

He gets there in time to see Jaime grabbing onto Nessi’s waist from behind — just as Nessi loudly screeches and makes a lunge for Grey. Grey is standing in front of her with his fingers touching his mouth. It takes Drogo a beat to realize that the red that he sees when Grey lifts up his fingers is blood. Grey is bleeding. Everyone is staring at the middle of the room.

“Whoa, whoa!” Drogo says, walking up to both of them. “What the fuck happened!”

 

 

  
Dany runs up and pushes a wet towel to his face and tries to help him with the bleeding — and he’s too angry to thank her. He yells at Drogo’s fucking idiot sister, and he tells her that she needs to fucking keep her hands to herself because she can’t fucking go around fucking messing with people when they don’t want her to. This fucking asshole woman _hit him_ in the _face._ He’s trying to explain to Drogo that his fucking idiot sister hit Grey clear in his fucking _face._

But it’s hard to be heard over her. She’s also yelling at him. She’s also screaming insane shit about how she was defending herself against him and his advances — and he shouts out, “Are you fucking _kidding_ me!” as he looks around for fucking witnesses. But she is crying now — she is crying a lot with her hands trembling and he is like, oh fucking great. Just fucking great. He is _fucked_ now.

He says, “Drogo —”

And Drogo says, “Hey, man. Can you give us some space for a bit?”

Drogo grabs his sister by her arm, and he hauls her into his bedroom as his other sister follows.

 

 

  
He is so pissed and he is so upset and he is kind of worried and hurt. He is just feeling a lot of shit right now — trying to figure out if he should just fucking leave and go home and not bother anyone ever the fuck again — when Dany and Jaime push him past a crowd of spectators and into the bathroom that just became vacant.

The bathroom is a complete mess, and there is no more toilet paper. Dany wets another hand towel — the cleanest one that she can find — and she starts soaping it up with hand soap in the sink, cleaning it before she can press it on Grey’s bloody lip. Jaime’s examining his face and calling out to Missandei to go grab some ice.

Yara shoves her way into the bathroom soon after. She softly says, “Grey, are you okay?”

He’s not. He’s really upset and worried about what Drogo must think of him. But he says, “Yeah.”

Missandei comes back with a bunch of ice — in her _bare hands._ She nervously says that all of the cups are gone — there are no more cups — as she dumps the ice cubes into Dany’s wet towel. The bundle gets pressed to his lip right after that. He cannot even look at her. He can’t look her in the face because he must look like such a fucking idiot to her. He feels like such shit.

She wants to check to see if he’s okay, too. She watched the entire altercation go down. She saw the kiss. She saw the slap. She wants to ask him what compels him to make the kind of decisions that he does with women — why is he always cheating on them? — but it’s really none of her business. He’s really none of her business.

 

 

  
Drogo tilts her head back and he looks into her eyes — he looks at her pupils. And then he says, “What the fuck, Nessi?” And then he answers all of his questions for her. He rails into her. He tells her that she fucked up. He tells her that she always does this shit. He asks her when she’s gonna finally fucking grow up. He asks her when she’s going to finally take some responsibility for her life and her fucking shit. He asks her when she’s going to stop being a fucking burden on other people. He hears Sona in the background, trying to calm him down, but he ignores her. He asks Nessi when this shitshow is finally going to be over. He tells her that the answer is probably fucking never.

She tells him that it’s just a little bit of fucking E, and he needs to fucking chill out. She tells him that what he’s saying to her is really rich. She tells him that he’s a fucking massive hypocrite. She tells him that he’s a real fucking mess himself, so that’s where she learned it. She ups the ante massively — and she tells him that she really, really hates him. She tells him that she does not love him and that he just makes her feel so angry and so bitter inside. She tells him she wishes that she didn’t know him. She repeats that she hates him, again and again. Sona is behind them, screaming for Nessi to shut the fuck up. But it does not matter because all of the words have landed exactly how she wanted them to land. They have their effect.

He’s trying not to lose it. Too much. He’s trying not to let it hurt so much. He blinks his eyes rapidly, trying not to actually get emotional. And he shakes his head because what else is there left to say? He says, “Okay. Okay.”

 

 

  
He’s not surprised that all of the drama has killed the party. The apartment is a fucking mess when he leaves the bedroom — and mostly empty. He sees Missy, Yara, Dany, Jaime, and Grey trying to clean up the mess of beer bottles and open containers of snacks.

He says, “Guys, it’s okay. Leave it. I’m having a cleaning service come by tomorrow.” He walks up to Grey specifically, who looks at him kind of warily. Drogo grabs Grey’s face and turns it so he can get a look at it better under the light. The cut has clotted, but it is raw and swollen. Drogo says, “Does it hurt?”

“No,” Grey says, voice low.

“So it hurts a little bit,” Drogo says simply.

“I didn’t —” Grey clears his throat. “I didn’t mess with her like how she said.”

“I know,” Drogo says softly. “She lies when she feels cornered. Because I lie when I feel cornered. We’re both spectacular at lying to maximize impact.”

Grey sighs, as he raises his arms and walks into Drogo’s hug. He was so worried that Drogo was mad at him — because to be honest — Grey is not completely devoid of fault. He kind of was mean to Drogo’s sister. He did kind of mock her to her face a little bit. He did tell her that he thought kissing her was disgusting. That was pretty harsh. He probably encouraged or nudged her meltdown along a little bit. He has regrets.

Drogo’s been hit in the face by Nessi before — he should have warned Grey that she sometimes does that. But then, he figured that she’s only bold enough to hit her family members in the face — not complete strangers that she wants to bang.

“Thanks again for inviting me out tonight,” Jaime says, watching this shit just continue to unfold in front of his face. “I was promised a good time. And guess what? You delivered. You guys are really good at delivering good times.”

 

 

  
Drogo asks them if they are hungry — and he starts ordering a couple of pizzas on his phone anyway, before they can answer, walking into the living room. Dany makes her way to the armchair where he is sitting, and she runs her hand through his hair. He almost recoils and screams rape or something over it, but he stops himself from being way fucking dramatic. She looks down at him as he looks up at her. She asks, “Are you okay?”

He tightly shakes his head no — almost imperceptibly. But he doesn’t verbalize it, just in case anyone in the kitchen is eavesdropping.

 

 

 

 

 


	21. Uh oh, is Dany going to be okay?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Missy hurts Grey's feeling by being ultra profesh. He responds to it in a mostly productive and healthy way, save for the one meltdown.

 

 

 

The rest of his weekend with his sisters is fairly low-key and predictable. Nessi pretends she didn’t devastate the fuck out of him by telling him that she hates him. He pretends that she didn’t break his heart. Everything is normal after that — just ordinary and normal and boring. It’s normal for them. She gets angry with him. She says brutal things to him. He pretends like he’s bulletproof. He makes a fuckton of excuses for her because he’s fucking weak. He puts up her shit because he feels sorry for her, because he is fucking patronizing.

He doesn’t completely trust his own feelings, and he doesn’t trust her words when she says goodbye to him at the airport. She cheerfully tells him that she loves him. He tiredly says, “I love you, too,” which still manages to be truthful.

Things with Sona are comparatively simpler. She frowns at him sympathetically. She knows that sometimes Drogo’s fatal flaw is that he’s not their father. It’s sometimes a shitty position to be in. And it’s also ridiculous because their father was a really shitty father — but time and death smooths over rough edges. Sometimes she even catches herself idealizing their father. Sometimes it’s not that hard to delude herself and believe that if their father was still alive, their lives would be so much better than it currently is. Sometimes it’s not hard to look at Drogo and get pissed that he is not actually their dad, but he has the gall to act like he is.

Sona holds him tightly, and she tells him that Dany is actually not that bad. Dany is not as bad as what she was anticipating.

He shrugs despondently — because he is emotionally drained. He says, “Bye bye. I love you so much,” as he kisses her head. “Call me when you land. Tell the rest of the fam I love them, too. Tell Mom that I’m thinking of visiting next month or so."

 

 

  
The next time Grey sees Missandei is early Monday morning, before anyone else has arrived at work. He’s actually been wanting to talk to her all weekend, but he thinks that it would be really intense and maybe creepy if he bothered her during her time off with his shit. So he has waited super patiently for Monday to see her and to talk to her.

He swings by her desk as she’s logging into her computer and he presses his elbows against wood, stooping down to get eye-level with her. He thinks that purple — the color of her shirt — is a really great color on her. He says, “Hey, so I’ve been reading some early buzz about this photo exhibit at the KLAM about youth culture in Ulthos — and I have tickets to the preview — and so I immediately thought of you. You know, for obvious reasons. It’s this Friday night. You feel like going? With me?”

He does not know that she has spent the bulk of her weekend over-analyzing her feelings about him. He does not realize that she’s getting worried that how she feels about him is getting a bit obsessive. She loves her job so much. She loves the work. She cannot let it get to the point where she has to leave it because she had another sort of emotional breakdown. She has to do things differently this time around. She has to learn from the past. She has to let go of these ideas that she has of him. She has to accept that things are completely different now. She has read a lot of articles on the internet about how to get over an ex when she still has to work with him. The articles tell her to keep it purely professional.

It’s entirely unexpected for him when she looks at him without an expression on her face. He actually expected her to smile at him and make his entire day with her smile — but actually, she says, “Shouldn’t you be taking Dany or Drogo to this sort of thing?”

He is caught off-guard, and he is stunned by what seems like really random anger. He says, “Oh.” And then he self-consciously straightens up and stands up to his full height. He says, “I mean, I could ask them. But I just thought that you’d be interested —”

“I’m busy,” Missandei says, her voice clipped.

“Oh,” he says, looking down at her doubtfully. “Okay. Just thought I’d ask.”

“I understand. But I am busy, like I said. Thanks for asking,” she says.

 

 

  
The cut on his lip isn’t as swollen or noticeable anymore, but Pyp does him a favor by telling the entire staff about what went down anyway. Jojen calls him a dog. Like, “Grey, you dog!”

He is so annoyed and so fucking sad by Missandei’s brutal shut down, so he just crankily tells them all to shut up. He tells Jojen that he’s not a dog. He’s not a dog in any sense of the word. He is not a literal dog. He is not a fucking player, like a person that gets around either. He’s a fucking weird motherfucker that repels people. And he’s a fucking _human being._ He lashes out and he also tells Meera to stop fucking posting weirdass pictures of him on Instagram. She is startled by the random criticism, and she asks him what kind of pictures he’d prefer to be posted. He tells her he’d prefer no pictures of him, actually. Post pictures of the work or something — but not stuff that they have signed NDAs for. She tells him that they sign NDAs for the majority of the work, and he loses his shit and he tells her that he cannot fucking do her job for her. She looks at him like he is losing his fucking marbles — and she’s less scared of him these days and she’s young and she’s brash, so she boldly starts to tell him that that’s not really how Insta works. Like — people _want_ to see pictures of him. Like, he should read the creepy and sometimes cute comments that are sometimes left on the pictures. She is just giving the people what they want. That’s part of the brand.

And then Grey snaps at her and tells her that he doesn’t know what else he can say about this to make her understand. He shouts, “Stop posting these emotional pictures of me to the public!”

She says, “I don’t think they are that emotional, though? They are basically pictures of you working, AKA thinking. And besides, it’s hard to take a picture of you that doesn’t look kind of angry, so I have to sift.”

“Meera!” he shouts. He is sick of her back-talking.

“Hey,” Missandei says, walking up and stepping into his line of sight. “Can you stop yelling at the designer?”

 

 

  
He discovers really fast that it’s not a fluke. The feelings of disorientation and confusion eventually give way to sadness and also anger and embarrassment, but mostly sadness, as the days pass and he tries to engage with her or he tries to smile at her and all he gets back is stilted awkwardness silence or a pensive pause before she changes the subject.

She’s been pretty cold to him. She’s been really polite and professional, but she doesn’t give him much more than that. She doesn’t laugh with him, and she doesn’t joke around with him anymore. He doesn’t understand it all. He doesn’t understand what he’s done wrong — and maybe that is the worst part — to have done something wrong, but to be so fucking oblivious that he can’t even fucking tell where he erred.

Drogo has noticed. She has been pretty friendly and normal with Drogo, so they both know that her issue is super Grey-specific. Drogo has asked him, “Buddy, what is going on with you and Missy?”

And he has said, “I don’t know.” He has said, “I think it changed the night of your party. But all I did was get sexually assaulted by your sister then get hit in the face really hard by her. I don’t know why Missandei would be mad at me for that.”

Drogo suggested that he just talk to Missandei about it. Which is so fucking classic it’s not even funny — Drogo advocating for the mature and sensible course of action, for the most self-effacing and humiliatingly vulnerable course of action.

Naturally, Grey is procrastinating on that.

It all makes him feel self-conscious. He feels self-aware, but also really, really out of touch. He feels upset. He feels a touch of what it felt like, during that period right after their break up and she just stopped taking his calls and started shutting him out, like it was so easy for her to turn off her feelings and to love him one moment and then to just full-on stop loving him a minute later. That was very painful — and so he looks at her right now — as she avoids looking back at him — and he doesn’t know what to do, just like he didn’t know what to do back then. He tried to talk to her back then, too. He tried to tell her that he didn’t think he could let her go because how could he possibly even fucking let her go? But she didn’t really want to listen to him say any of those things.

So a part of him wants to do things differently and just respect her wishes — a part of him just thinks that he should leave her alone. Another part of him wants to scream out against this — because he does not know how she can make him feel this way again — he doesn’t know how she can do this to him again.

 

 

  
He ends up going to the preview by himself. Because he’s kind of miserable and he doesn’t really want a witness to this and he doesn’t want to burden anyone else.

The exhibit is beautiful and haunting and just the sort of thing he loves.

 

 

  
Osha comes back from her maternity leave expecting Missandei to be in the office because Drogo and Grey told her about the hire and asked to get her thoughts on it — she was a strong affirmative. Nonetheless, when she sees Missandei, she loudly squeals, scaring the shit out Yoren and making him jump. Osha splays her arms out and she says, “My girl!”

Missandei spreads out her arms, too, and she says, “Boo!” And then they run up to each other and start excitedly catching up. They used to work in-office together way back in the day, so there were slews of weeks where they saw each other every day.

Grey has to sit in on a meeting with them, being excited to see one another, as Missandei and Yoren hand off all of Osha’s work that a contractor has been only adequately covering.

 

 

  
She bites the bullet, and she buys herself a car. She thinks it’s a good idea to because her brother lives in an inconvenient place and she’s sick of always trying to score rides from her niece or making her brother pick her up from the train station. She’s sick of using ride-shares when she clearly makes enough money for a car.

In the same week that she buys a car, she relents and she lets Yara set her up on a blind date. She has promised herself that she is going to be serious about moving on. She is going to get serious about putting the past behind her. She told Yara that dating apps scare her because what if she ends up going out with a predator or someone gross? Yara told her that men are generally pretty gross.

The date is fine. They meet at a coffee shop to have a latte and a mocha together. She didn’t want to be stuck having an entire meal with the guy on the off chance that the date is terrible. She asks him how he knows Yara — and then she discovers that Yara _barely_ knows this guy. Yara is apparently a friend of a friend and he talked to her at a party and played board games with her one night. That is _it._

He is very nice — a little boring, and a fair bit nervous and manic. When she asks him why he’s nervous, it gets really weird because he flat out denies it and says he’s totally fine. She doesn’t want to insist to him that she can tell he’s nervous — because it’s pretty apparent. So she just sips her coffee and asks him about his job. He is a civil engineer. She doesn’t know what one of those does, so she asks him. And then she regrets asking him.

At the end of the date, he tells her that he had fun and he’ll call her. She really wishes that he wouldn’t, but maybe some people take a few dates to really open up, to have real chemistry. She is noncommittal and tells him that it was very nice to meet him.

 

 

  
Before she leaves the office for dinner, Missy freshens up her red lipstick in the women’s restroom, fluffs up her hair, and she puts on a different necklace. Meera and Osha notice the little changes and clap for her. They assume she’s going on another date because the first date she went on was such a big deal to her — she hasn’t dated in years! — that it makes them excessively happy for the personal gains she is making in her life. Osha lets out a whistle and says, “Go get it, girl!”

“Oh,” Missandei says, turning around to look at all of them, at Grey, too. “It’s not like that.”

Osha waves her off. “Yeah yeah, we know you are classy and don’t put out on the first date. Don’t worry.”

 

 

  
He corners her in the studio as she’s shutting off the lights, right before she leaves for her dinner date. He’s just been a fucking mess all month and it’s been affecting how he sleeps, how he works, how he just lives his fucking life. He understands his place in her life — he understands that he’s not entitled to her and he has no right to demand anything from her. That’s not why he’s here, fucking blocking her exit by standing in front of the door. He’s actually here because he can’t get it out of his head — that he has done something wrong and something bad to make her so mad at him that she doesn’t want to be his friend anymore.

He starts just apologizing in anxiety. He says, “Sorry, I’m sorry.” He means for the manner in which he is talking to her right now. He means for the bombardment and the sneak attack. He also means for his timing. He knows that she’s about to go off looking great, to have fun with someone else. And he raggedly sighs. He says, “I won’t keep you. I just — I just wanted to talk to you for a second. I just wanted to say that I’m really, really happy and glad that we’re working together again. Like, it’s so special to me that we get to work together to again. I don’t want to jeopardize it. And I just want you to know that if I have done something to offend you or to make you angry with me — I want to know about it. I’d want to know so that I can apologize for it and then, you know, adjust my behavior. Because I don’t want to do anything that makes you uncomfortable. I’m sorry if I have.”

She’s blinking rapidly, trying to shove the tears back into her head — but it doesn’t work and they start dripping down her cheeks. She raises the back of her hand to dab at them. She tries to make a small joke. She says, “Oh, great. You’ve ruined my makeup.”

In response to that, he actually looks devastated. It would be a comical overreaction in other circumstances, but in this one, it is just sad. He says, “Oh man, I’m sorry. It looked really nice before I ruined it, too.”

 

 

  
She is too emotional and too disoriented to properly respond to this right now. She feels so bad — for a bunch of reasons she hasn’t fully processed yet. She _does_ know that she feels bad for how bad she has made him feel. She hadn’t realize that she was hurting his feelings by being super professional with him. She was too mired in her own stupid shit.

She does remember what it was like to listen to his voice messages over and over again right after their breakup. She does remember what it felt like to listen to his quiet voice ask her how she could do this to them, ask her if she ever loved him at all, ask her how he was supposed to forget her and just move on from her.

She decides to buy herself some time. She says, “I’m so _sorry,_ but I have to run. I —”

“You’re running late.” He’s deflating and he’s deeply discouraged now. He’s withdrawing.

“Yeah. I’m sorry. I just . . . have reservations.”

“Okay,” he says. He tightly shrugs. “Well, I won’t keep you then.”

 

 

Missy is actually meeting Dany for dinner. This is a big deal — a big production because it took fucking _forever_ to schedule. This actually came about during Drogo’s party, when Missy went to get a refill of ice for Grey’s lip after the first batch melted. She plopped a bunch of new cubes into the blood-tinged pink towel, and Dany was randomly all like, “Do you want to have dinner together sometime?” And Missandei was caught off guard so hard that she said sure.

And then Dany played hard-to-get for a long time. It might be Dany’s new MO. Asking a girl to dinner all bold and brash. And then making the girl wait and wait and wait and _wait_ before it actually goes anywhere — so that the girl will fucking go _insane._

Dinner then became a fucking mission for Missandei, because what fucking _mind game_ is this fucking woman _playing_ at _here?_ Hooking up with the love of Missandei’s life, flaunting it, and then what? Gloating about it by paying for Missandei’s dinner because _yeah,_ Dany is going to _pay_ for _dinner._ Does Dany even fucking know that she is messing with a person who has a history of being fucking mentally unstable?

“Oh, you look so pretty,” Dany says, as Missy walks up to their table.

 

 

 

 

 


	22. It's a woman date!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dany and Missy fail the Bechdel test at the beginning of the night, but manage to rebound by the end.

 

 

 

They generally talk a lot about Dany and Dany’s life for the first half hour of dinner. It’s pretty fucking annoying to Missandei, but for now, Missy is too polite to bring everything to a screeching halt and call out Dany on this.

Dany tells her about all the cool shit that Dany is doing — all of these gains Dany has made with her company — the foothold and in-roads that she has made in department stores and the ways in which she is trying to build up traffic to her online store.

In truth, Dany is talking about herself a lot because she is a little bit nervous and she is kind of used to being the topic of conversation in nearly all conversations at work.

Dany tries to tell a funny story to get Missandei to laugh and loosen up — because it’s pretty obvious that this dinner is tanking really hard. Dany talks about the dumb stuff her assistant sometimes does because her assistant has a hard time with long term thinking sometimes. That is the folly of youth, probably. Dany is trying to pay Missy a compliment when she says that Missy would never make the kind of stupid mistakes that her assistant makes. Dany is trying to say that even when Missandei was in her early twenties, Missandei was able to project far, far ahead to the future. They are both similar in this way — kind of wise beyond their actual years. Though at this point, they have probably caught up in wisdom and not much of what they say seems shockingly smart for people so young. They aren’t that young anymore.

Missandei completely misinterprets Dany’s compliment. Missandei kind of says, “Thanks?” and then looks off to the side. “I’m not someone’s assistant though.” She means that not botching a lunch order is usually not an accomplishment of her day. It is not a sign of her fucking competence. She can actually fucking do s _o much more_ than order lunch. She means that she’s been above that pay grade for many, many years now. She means that it’s been a long time since she’s worked for Dany.

Dany frowns. She says, “I didn’t mean that like how you are interpreting it.” Because Dany never apologizes flippantly, and she never takes responsibility for things flippantly, either.

“So what did you actually mean?” Missy asks.

 

 

  
Dany is actually struggling over how to articulate what she wants to say. She actually wants to bypass all of this mundane bullshit to get to the heart of the matter. The heart of it is that she is so sorry. She’s so sorry that she hasn’t reached out and she hasn’t been there for Missandei in a long time. She is sorry that she’s so fucking cowardly and pathetic and a bad person — so she just doesn’t know how to look upon Missandei’s face and not reveal to Missandei all of her flaws. She’s been trying to moderate her words with extra attention as a result. She has been saying nothing of substance as a result.

Missandei is actually getting really pissed off. She cannot disentangle her own human feelings from this interaction — so she doesn’t know how this woman even has the fucking balls to try and and act like they are friendly after this fucking woman worked so hard to become her best friend and then turned around and had the balls to sleep with her ex. And not only just an ex — but _Grey._ Missandei does not even know what kind of fucking manipulative and opportunistic psycho plays such a fucking long game like that. Did Dany just do all of that shit so calculatingly so that it would _hurt_ the most right now? How did Dany even know that Missy was going to come back when Missy didn’t even know? How did Dany even know that Missy was going to fucking care about him the way that she does again — when Missy didn’t even anticipate that?

Missy doesn’t know why they are engaging in this farce — other than the fact that Dany is superior and just doesn’t give a shit. Other than the fact that Missandei is such a fucking pushover and such a fucking little bitch when it comes to taking what she wants.

And then to come here and listen to Dany pay her a really patronizing compliment about how Dany thinks she’s at least intelligent enough to not fucking mess up a salad order — when she fucking produced several award-winning documentaries — well, it’s just too fucking much.

“Why did you ask me out to dinner?” Missandei says, pushing the words out fast. “What was the point in asking me to dinner and then making me wait more than a _month_ for your schedule to clear up? Does it just feel good to you, to put me in my place? You _already_ have _him_ — and isn’t that _enough?_ You already get to _have him,_ so why do you need to go one step extra and shove my face in it?”

 

 

  
Holy fuck. Holy fuck. Holy _fuck._

This is basically what is going through Dany’s mind as Missandei just lays into her. Dany looks around the restaurant to see if anyone else is listening to this vicious take down and if anyone else is impressed by it. Dany is kind of thrillingly bewildered — because she fucking deserves everything Missandei is saying. Missandei tells Dany that she is a fucking mean person and she’s not very fucking gracious. Missandei tells Dany that Dany is careless with other people’s fucking emotions — and that shit is fucking _painful._ Missandei tearfully says, “I know that he and I haven’t been together in a long time — and I know I was the one who let him go, but I still have _feelings,_ and —”

“Oh my God! You’re talking about Grey!” Dany says, suddenly cutting in. She has actually been trying to figure out who Missandei is referring to, with all of the vague pronouns. Dany spontaneously laughs — because it’s not the first time that she has mistaken Drogo for Grey, when it came to Missandei. What a silly dunderhead mistake again. Dany laughs right at Missandei — who looks so fucking _pissed_ and who is also crying because she’s so pissed. Dany says, “You’re talking about Grey! Okay! Carry on. Go ahead. I’m with you now. Go on ahead. What were you saying? About your feelings?”

“What the fuck, Dany!” Missy shouts out — causing their waiter to do a complete one-eighty with their entrees, spinning around to walk off where he came from. “Are you fucking _laughing_ at my _pain_ right now!”

Their waiter turns around and comes back after a few seconds — realizing that he has food in his hands, and he just needs to do his job.

 

 

  
Over a seafood stew and crusty bread, Dany tells Missandei that she is not dating Grey. She has no claim over him. She just doesn’t answer any questions about her personal life in the press because fuck that shit. She didn’t think that Missandei reads gossip columns. Isn’t Missandei too busy and naturally uninterested in that BS? Anyway, Dany has actually been sleeping with Drogo. She has no claim over that guy, either. But has no one really told Missandei this? Anyway, that’s one of Dany’s deep and dirty shames — not Drogo himself. He’s fine. It’s mostly their unhealthy dynamic that is shameful.

“You’re really not with Grey?” Missandei asks. “You’ve never been with Grey?”

“I mean, we made out with each other a few years ago, and we’ve seen each other in various states of undress. But that’s about it.”

“Dany!” Missy hisses over her beef shank. “Can you stop making jokes! I am so stressed out right now!”

“I’m not joking though. We really _did_ make out. He’s a good kisser!”

“You’re saying this shit like you think it’s funny!” Missy says. “You’re like, smiling _right now!”_

Dany points at her face. She says, “Only because I’m thinking of the thoughts that probably were running through your head this _whole time,_ when you thought I was with him. And it’s really funny.”

 

 

  
Dany calls at their waiter and beckons him over with a crook of her finger. She says she’d like another round, gesturing to the empty martini glasses in front of her and Missandei. She tells him she’d also like a dessert menu. Missandei is sitting across the table, still disoriented and still a little bit ticked for reasons she does not understand — she’s fighting to catch up — but Dany is already way ahead because she has way more information. She already knows that she’s getting Missandei back — she’s getting her friend back. It’s a done deal. She is already celebrating. Missandei does not even know what a big fucking deal this is, that Dany is having more than one drink and that she’s about to eat something made of sugar. This is like, a fucking once-in-a-year event right here.

“Do you want to do the creme brulee? Or is that too basic? Do you want to try the semolina cake? Am I feeling like lemon though?”

“Oh my God, fuck you,” Missy says. “And _fuck_ your dessert.”

“You know what?” Dany says, looking at Missandei. “You are right. We can get one of each. We do not have to choose.”

 

 

  
Dany licks the custard from her spoon, and she just wants to die because it’s so good. It’s better than sex. It’s better than an orgasm. It’s more loving, and it’s sweet and crunchy on top. She groans and she dips her spoon back in and licks it clean again, as she tells Missandei that Viserys has been stressing her the fuck out. That’s part of why it took so long to schedule dinner. Her brother has been seeing a woman. Her brother says he is in love, which is bullshit because psychopaths do not know how to love. They only know how to covet. And Viserys is trying to move cities with this woman because she has a job offer. If Dany’s brother moves, it will be so much harder for her to keep tabs on him. She’s been trying to get him to fucking stop it, to just concede and wreak his fucking havoc here in King’s Landing, so that she can just deal with it more easily. Dany tells Missy that she’s kind of thinking about getting a butt lift. Because she has no butt. She might have body dysmorphia. But it’s hard not to have that in her business. Dany tells Missandei she really, really wants a puppy so badly. But she is fucking terrible and she will probably accidentally kill the puppy — due to her busy schedule and probably also because she’s probably a psychopath, too. They like to kill animals. She tells Missy that this is why she never messed around too much with Grey. First off, he would not put up with her psychopathy. Secondly, he’s so wonderful and so great and so amazing. He deserves more than a psychopath.

“Oh my God,” Missandei mutters, shoving lemon cake into her mouth. “Don’t get a butt lift. You are gorgeous already and it is inhuman and disgusting. Fucking let your asshole brother move away. At some point, you are not responsible for him anymore. I don’t think you have time for a dog unless it’s a small foofy dog that you can carry around everywhere. And stop calling yourself a psychopath. You’re not a psychopath. I saw how you cried when you had to do that first round of layoffs in our first season.” She pauses, swallowing her bite. “Hey, what’s sex with Drogo like?”

“Um, he’s not as good at it as he would lead you to believe. He gets insecure a lot more than you’d think.”

Missandei drops her jaw and starts loudly laughing. She laughs until she starts choking on a cake crumb that lodges into somewhere in a corner of her throat.

 

 

  
At the end of dinner, Dany is kind of drunk and Missandei is _definitely_ drunk. They are in no state to drive, so they wander around a little bit, locked arm in arm, swaying messily and dangerously on the sidewalk. Dany tries to pull Missandei into a bar, but Missy clamps her hand over her mouth and shakes her head. She says she’s done for the night.

They taxi to Dany’s place, which is the closer one between the two of them. Missandei giggles into the elevator walls, fogging up the glass with her breath as they hit the twenty-fourth floor. Missandei says, “Of course. Of course you live here!” as she drops her purse carelessly on the couch and runs up to look at the expansive city view below them. Missandei tells Dany that in Volantis, she lived in a high-rise, too. But now she lives in the basement. She giggles again and spins on her feet to face Dany. She asks Dany if Dany thinks that’s a metaphor for something.

Dany says, “No,” as she hands Missy a cold bottle of water.

Dany turns on the gas fireplace and drops a heavy blanket on top of Missandei, who is lying face up on the floor, next to the windows. Her heels are still on, peeking out underneath the edge of the blanket. Dany lies down on the cold hard floor with a blanket too, because she usually takes her view for granted.

She’s unexpectedly gets choked up — she starts crying — as she tells Missandei, “You know, I’ve thought a lot about being here like this — with you. There were a lot of times when I was just in this big place by myself and I just missed you so much. I used to wonder a lot, about what you’d think of where I live.” She pulls the edge of her blanket over her fist and she roughly wipes her wet eyes with it, smearing her eyeliner to hell. She sniffs, and she says, “I’m sorry I haven’t been there for you.”

 

 

  
They build a makeshift fort — sort of. Missandei gets up and starts dragging Dany’s dining chairs into the living room, arranging the chairs so they are facing each other. And then she looks around the room for something heavy — she uneasily pulls a couple of marble statues of sentinel lions onto the seats. And then pulls out a thick wood shelf from the closet and lays it across the backs of the chairs.

Dany is lying underneath the shelf, on the floor. Missy has stripped the blanket off of Dany’s body. Dany has requested that she get the opportunity to touch up her makeup, but Missandei has said no. Leave it. It looks really good.

It is smeared and is it pretty obvious she has been crying.

Dany says, “Oh my God,” as Missy leaves her heels on and starts gingerly climbing onto the dining chairs, onto the shelf. Dany says, “Please don’t crush me.”

Missy says, “No promises. Art is pain sometimes,” as she balances dangerously on her knees, as she fiddles around with her phone.

This idea came about because Missy said she likes the way the city lights bounce off Dany’s face. She likes the colors and she likes the contrast. It would be cool to get a photo straight down. Dany had said that she thinks the same effect could be achieved with a selfie stick. Missandei said good point — but does Dany have a selfie stick? No, she does not.

Missy points the phone’s lens down at Dany. She says, “Whoa,” as she fights to keep her balance. And then she says, “Look at me.” Dany obediently looks up at the phone, because Dany is really good at lady-posing these days. She’s really good at being a camera prop.

Missy snaps the photo.

 

 

  
Dany tells Missy that she wants a photo of them together. Not for her work or anything like that. Not for social media. But just for her to have. Though, if they happen to look really good together in pictures, obviously Dany will probably end up posting it. Because the internet loves photos of conventionally beautiful women, duh. Missandei throws her head back, laughing and swaying her legs so that her heels lightly knock against Dany’s vanity in the bathroom. She tells Dany that the internet actually likes photos of conventionally beautiful women — undressed and provocative — as she makes a goofy face at the camera.

 

 

  
Dany ends up posting the first picture — of her tear-smudged face staring up at the camera with diffused blotchy light distorting her features, with her hair messily strewn on the floor — because the first picture is arresting. She forces Missandei to create an Instagram account, just so she can give photo credit properly. She tells Missandei that tomorrow, there will probably be an article about how they are dating now.

 

 

  
There are parking tickets on both of their cars when they get back to their vehicles the next morning. Missandei slept over in Dany’s guest room. Missandei rips the ticket from her windshield and she tells Dany that the cops in King’s Landing are fucking tyrannical, and she will not stand for this!

They hug each other tightly next to Missandei’s car. Dany says, “Let’s hang out again soon.” Dany mutters, “I’ll have my fucking useless assistant contact you to schedule something. Maybe we can go wine-tasting if I am really good with my diet for the rest of the week.”

“Oh my God, I love wine-tasting.”

“Oh my God, yeah. With cheese breaks in between.”

“Oh my God, yeah. I love cheese. I love the kind of cheese that is soft and leaky and smells like hair that hasn’t been washed in days.”

“Oh man, I go to so many parties with cheese spreads and there are always a couple of assholes who are like —” Dany puts on a really nasal affectation. “‘I love brie. I love bacon cheddar. Isn’t it the _best?’_ And I don’t even know what to say to these people because it’s like, they probably eat sandwiches with Swiss cheese and yellow mustard on them and it’s like, just go fucking _kill yourself_ already!”

“That’s really great, Dany,” Missandei says. “That seems like a really reasonable response to people who like brie and cheddar.” Missandei actually is not even joking that much.

“They’re like fucking cheeses for fucking _babies.”_

Missy laughs. She blinks against the sun and rubs her eyes. She says, “Hey. You know I love you, right?”

Dany is blinking against the sun, too. And also because she is so fucking emotional. She says, “Oh my God, I fucking love you, too.”

 

 

  
Missandei stops off at the art museum before she makes her way home. She pays the price of admission and drags her sore legs and feet in her high heels up these shiny majestic escalators up to the third floor. She’s fresh faced, having wiped off her makeup before crashing in Dany’s guest bed. Her hair needs some attention and love and moisture, because she slept on it like she didn’t even give a fuck.

She slips her phone into the back pocket of her tight jeans as her shoes click on the shiny smooth tile as she makes her way to the Ulthos photo exhibition. Her new empty Instagram account has been exploding with followers because Dany tagged her. She supposes that she might hand it over to Meera, too.

He was right. This is what she thinks as she walks through the exhibit. This is totally the kind of thing she loves.

 

 

 


	23. Dany takes a leap of faith

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dany says goodbye to her past so she can move on with the future. And oh snap, Grey does the same thing!

 

 

  
She kind of feels really embarrassed? Like, she kind of feels like a super massive silly asshole when she looks back at the last year, when she looks back at all of the times she imagined Grey and Dany getting naked to do the sex together and gossiping about her behind her back when they weren’t fucking each other, like calling her ugly or uninteresting or clingy and like, maybe he told a whole bunch of people that he thought her vagina was real busted.

So apparently that stuff never happened. Weirrrd.

She has really messed up, big time. When she realizes that he was totally single when he kissed her outside of a mall and said goodbye forever but just kidding, they are going to work together again — when she realizes he was single when they went out to dinner and he paid for her dinner and he wanted her to text him to let him know that she made it home safe — when she realizes that he was single when he adorably and nervously asked her to go to the photo exhibition preview with him and she was a fucking huge tool about it and told him no thanks — well, she wants to punch herself in the fucking face so hard and then crawl into a hole and die because she has probably fucking _blown it_ so fucking _hard._ Beyond being kind of mean, she is also kind of an idiot. Why would someone smart and amazing want to be around such an idiot anyway?

She purposely gets to the office at eight thirty in the morning with the rest of the staff, so that she doesn’t have to have an awkward run-in with him. They have their staff meeting at nine. Drogo gets into the office at the tail end of it and rushes into his office, dropping off some equipment before he heads to the break room to grab a cup of coffee.

He’s sipping from a white mug as he stands in front of her desk and stares at her. His eyes are crinkled in the corners. She looks at him with suspicion because he is too mischievous sometimes. She says, “What?”

He holds up his phone. It’s just his screen. His background image is of a mountainscape that is reflected in a lake. He might’ve taken that picture. He might not have. It’s not really his style. But whatever. She repeats, “What?” She says, “I don’t get it.”

He peeks at his phone screen, and then kind of jolts in surprise. He says, “Oh shit. Hold on,” as he fiddles around and presses buttons. Then he says, “Ah ha!” and flips the phone around and shows her again.

It’s the picture of Dany that she took last Friday. He’s showing her Dany’s Instagram.

“Oh,” she says.

“I really like this!” he says enthusiastically. “This is really fucking cool! How did you get this shot from this angle? Were you hovering above her?”

“Ohh,” she says. “Yeah! I stacked a board on some chairs and I climbed on top to get the shot!”

“Nice!” Drogo says appreciatively. “This is really fucking good.” And then spinning around — to Grey’s open door — Drogo shouts, “See, Grey! I told you! Missy is not devoid of talent! Didn’t I tell you!”

Grey’s irritated voice immediately floats out to them. He says, “Shut up!”

 

 

She has completely over-thought this — which is pretty normal for her. It’s pretty much consistent with her personality. She has decided that she can’t just go from detached and professional to suddenly warm and friendly again. He’ll think she’s fucking bipolar and insane — if he doesn’t already. She has to ease into it. She has to like, start with the occasional bit of eye contact and then work her way up to a smile. And then maybe by next week, she can make a joke with him. And then maybe soon after that, she could like, bring him some coffee in the morning or something. And then maybe _after that,_ she might muster up the guts to tell him that he should consider fucking taking off all of his clothes, letting her see his naked body again, and then letting her do all sorts of shit to his naked body again.

Her sexy thoughts about him are way less alarming now. Because he’s totally single so it’s cool.

Her efforts at slowly easing back into their old rapport and dynamic are really awkward and weird. A lot of her little jokes are actually landing really bitchy and mean. Like, when he asks her if she can hand him the telephoto, she says, “Oh, get it yourself.” But instead of sounding funny and sassy and kind of cute, she just sounds like a real dick. He gives her a look of like, well, honestly he just looks kind of hurt. And then he walks over to grab the lens that is like, sitting about a foot away from her hand.

Like, when the entire team is storyboarding a first pass of a video concept, and Grey makes the suggestion of having the story told in two parts, on a individual level and then on a macro or community level — she says, “Okay, that’s an idea.” And she actually meant to say, “That’s an idea!” Like with enthusiasm and a sense of reinforcement. But instead, her tone made it sound like she’s actually saying something like: Oh, you’re talking again?

 

 

  
She is so freaking bad at not accidentally being a jerk that he actually pulls her aside at the end of the day and in the privacy of his office, he asks, “Seriously, I hate to beat the shit out of a dead horse — but have I done something to offend you? Please let me know if I have.”

She wants to melodramatically drop her face into her hands so that her screaming will be muffled. Instead, she says, “No, you haven’t done anything to me. You’re perfect.”

He raises his brows at that. Because she is frankly, driving him nuts. She is kind of gaslighting him. She is kind of acting one way, making him all worried about where he stands with her, and then she is kind of telling him that he’s making all of this up in his head. This is basically the classic definition of being gaslit. He does not even know what else to say to her. He doesn’t think he should work so hard to convince someone that he is probably actually really bothering her, and she should start compiling these reasons why.

“Do you have plans tonight?” she blurts. “I mean, we’re kind of due for a conversation, right?”

“I’m busy,” he says. And then he winces. “I’m not saying that to be a punk or to punish you or get you back. I _really_ am busy tonight.”

“Oh, what are you busy with?”

“Dany,” he says.

Oh. Now she knows that they are not having naked sex with each other. So it’s totally cool. Cool. “What are you guys doing? Are you gonna tux up again?”

He looks at her strangely. He says, “No. We’re just hanging out.”

“Oh, cool. Cool beans. Coolio. Haha Gangsta’s Paradise.”

He’s staring at her blankly.

“You don’t know Gangsta’s Paradise?”

“No, I know the song,” he says. “I don’t get the relevance to this conversation.”

“Oh, it’s not relevant,” she says. “It’s just . . . wordplay. Kind of?”

“Okay.”

 

 

  
Dany stops by his place for a semi-quick catch up. She told him she was gonna bring him food. She ends up bringing him sweets — donuts — and a shake. He doesn’t have the biggest sweet tooth, so it’s a little weird. And she has brought food just for him. She’s not drinking or eating because, she says, she has to go onto her dinner plans. She keeps trying to convince him that her body will explode into fat and rolls if she takes in empty calories.

She takes one of his steak knives from his butcher block and starts cutting the donuts into bite sized pieces. He thinks this is way fucking weird, but he puts up with it, as she starts feeding him these individual pieces that she has cut up. He kind of fucking wants to know why all of these women in his life have fucking lost their ever-loving minds. He wants to call up Yara to see if she has also fucking lost her fucking brain, see if this is some fucking epidemic.

Dany has him wash down the unglazed sour cream donut and the bourbon cherry fritter with the shake. The shake is slightly salty and smooth and cold. She tells him that the flavor she picked out for him is called “breakfast cereal flavor.”

He almost drops the shake. Instead he accusingly says, “You brought me a pretentious shake, Dany! You brought me pretentious fucking donuts!”

She ignores his hysteria. She leans in and says, “Drink it slower. Really taste it. Describe what it tastes like to me, in detail.”

“It’s malty,” he says.

“Yeah? What else?”

He says. “It has a barley or wheaty sweetness. It’s a little salty at the tail end. It’s not really a high-fat shake. It melts fast. It doesn’t leave a film of fat. Is there not any dairy in this?”

“It’s an almond milk base!” she says excitedly. And then she shoves a piece of cherry fritter into his mouth. She says, “Taste that and describe it to me.”

“Are you fucking getting off on this?” he mutters, really just seriously unimpressed with this shit right now.

“Kind of, yeah,” she says. “I can’t eat because of dinner. But I like watching you eat. Is that weird?”

“Christ, Dany,” he says. “It’s way fucking weird.”

 

 

  
She keeps feeding him the donuts. He starts to get overloaded on sugar, and he is telling her that he’s good — he’s not exactly full, but he does not want to eat this stuff anymore. She shushes him, and she tells him one more bite, as she shoves more donut into his face. He tells her that she is reminding him of the witch in Hansel and Gretel, fattening him up so that he will be yummy to eat. She tells him that she doesn’t think he needs to be fattened — to be yummy to eat. She actually means it as a funny and sexual double entendre, but he doesn’t get it because he’s Grey. He tells her that meat tastes good when it has fat marbling in it. He tells her that he’s probably a tad too lean to taste any good. He is probably like the texture of a wizened old hen that has laid too many eggs and who has walked a little too much in her life.

And then he abruptly changes the subject away from the taste of his flesh. He randomly calls her a real fucking weirdo. He thanks her for the shake and the donuts. He asks her when they are going on their next fancy outing. He asks her how things are going at work. He asks her how things are going with Drogo.

She tells him that she already has ideas for their next fancy outing. She tells him that work is fucking crazy — but good. She tells him that things with Drogo are fine. Normal.

She also decides to blindside him because she does not even have time to ease into this. She tells him, “Missandei thought we were sleeping together. She cried to me about it and told me that I wasn’t being sensitive to her feelings by sleeping with you. And then when I told her we weren’t sleeping together — she looked really, really relieved and happy.” She kind of shrugs. “You should do something about that.”

 

 

  
He responds to her bomb by saying, “Okay, get out of my home.”

And she understands his sense of humor, so she says, “I will, but not just yet. Don’t you want to know more?”

“No, man,” he says, sighing. “I don’t.”

“Why not?”

He shakes his head slowly. He says. “Because I’m tired of getting my heart beaten to a pulp by her.”

 

 

  
When she goes to leave, when he goes to say goodbye to her, he touches her face gently with his fingertips and he gets in close. He leans down, and he softly and gently kisses her on the cheek. It results in this pleasant zip of electricity running through her. They’ve always had chemistry. Chemistry was never their problem.

She knocks his hand off her face. She holds his cheeks in her palms as she looks up at him. She gets on her toes, and she properly presses her lips to his. She drops her hands from his face to rest them on his shoulders. She kisses him softly and gently. She feels his hand carefully pressing into the small of her back. She feels emotional about this, so she is glad that he is keeping the both of them balanced. She feels emotional about this because she’s letting a part of him and a part of herself go. Because they have to, at this point. There’s this thickness in her chest. She been telling herself — for months now — that Drogo deserves better than what she is giving him.

When they part, he quietly says, “I really _do_ love you.”

She says, “I love you, too.”

He says, “The sex — it would’ve been amazing.”

She smiles at him wryly. She says, “I know. You would’ve blown my mind.”

 

 

  
She then moves on and goes onto her dinner plans. She really drags her feet as she makes her way to the burger joint. She’s dragging her feet because this feels momentous, and she is kind of cowardly and scared when it comes to these kinds of gestures. Sometimes her overtures are so small that people completely miss them. She bought this special imported yogurt because her assistant wondered out loud what food in Pentos is like. The yogurt was a famous brand. And when Dany tried to make her assistant eat it, Irri said, ew, she does not like yogurt because it is sour. And Dany kind of felt stupid. She felt stupid for ever fucking having cared for this person because this person just doesn’t fucking _get it._

So, neither she nor he especially like burgers, but he’s torturing her with fat and red meat and she’s trying to prove a point by eating fat and red meat with him. She gives him a wave when she arrives and smells beef, fat, and cheese. Her stomach rolls. She’s scared that Drogo is going to not fucking get it because he’s so fucking dumb sometimes.

 

 

  
She’s watching him shove just carbs and meat and fat into his face like he doesn’t even care about his health or his body. And she has to snap her fingers in his face to get his attention. She feels nervous.

With his mouth full, he says, “I really hate it when you snap your fingers in my face, man.”

“I really hate it when you don’t pay attention to me. So we both have things we hate that the other one does.”

He rolls his eyes at her.

 

 

  
“Hey,” she says, touching both of his hands to keep his attention. “Are you seeing anyone else? Besides me? Are you sleeping with anyone else besides me?”

He blinks in surprise. He senses they are about to have a conversation. He is worried that it’s going to be an STD conversation, so he chews quickly and swallows. He says, “Not at the moment, no. Why?”

“I’m not sleeping with anyone else, either,” she says.

“Okay.”

“Do you want to only see each other?” she blurts. “Do you want to like — try? With me?”

 

 

  
He is actually not an automatic yes. He actually gets really freaked out and scared and he immediately puts some distance in between them. He scoots back in his chair.

He tells her that he’s fucking good at sex but he’s fucking _terrible_ at relationships, so that’s why their arrangement was very good and convenient for him. She tells him that he’s not that good at sex, so don’t worry. And she knows that he’s pretty bad at relationships. She’s also very, very bad at relationships. But it doesn’t matter. Because that doesn’t have to be what this is. It doesn’t have to carry expectations.

He tells her that he’s actually great at sex, but she just never lets him be great. She is like a quintessential woman about it — just always keeping him from being as great as he can be. She doesn’t realize that he is fucking with her at first, so she slaps his milkshake out of his hand and he scrambles to catch it, so that it doesn’t fall to the ground and makes a mess.

He asks, “What about Grey?”

She says, “I don’t think he wants to make our threesome sexual. I think he’d like to keep it platonic.”

“Dany!” he says in exasperation — annoyed that she is not being ultra serious, for once.

“You and him are _really_ close!” she snaps. “The you-having-sex-with-Grey jokes have to be made!”

“Oh, I _know_ the jokes have to be made!” he snaps back. “I make them _all_ the _time_ with him! I mean — Dany, come on. You know what I mean. What about _Grey?”_

“You’re so fucking _stupid_ sometimes, and it’s so fucking _annoying,”_ she spits. “You don’t seem to get that I am choosing _you,_ not him.”

Drogo looks at her like she’s crazy. He says, “What the fuck!”

 

 

  
Missy wakes up early so that she has time to stop off at the coffee shop before work. She orders each of them a latte. She chooses latte because it’s the least sweet coffee that comes to mind because he is not a fan of sweet things.

When she gets into the office, he is already there checking his emails. She walks into his space and she quietly lays down the paper cup of hot coffee — next to his lukewarm office coffee. She feels a bit lame about it — but peace offerings are peace offerings. She is trying to get ahead of schedule on her entire tour of regret and half-apologies.

He says, “Thanks,” not lifting his eyes from his computer screen.

She pulls up a chair in front of his desk. She sits down in it expectantly. And he understands what it means, so he quickly finishes his email, sends it, and then moves his focus away from the screen and to her.

He says, “What’s up?”

She says, “I’m sorry it’s been so weird between us lately.”

“Yeah,” he says. “It’s fine.”

“No, it’s not,” she says. “I’ve been kind of shitty to you. And I want to explain why —”

“I think I know why,” he interjects. And upon her look of surprise, he says, “Dany told me.”

“Oh,” she says softly.

 

 

  
He does a lot of the talking, so that she never gets the chance to tell him that he is still all she thinks about sometimes. She never gets to tell him that she’s afraid that she might still love him. Or maybe the better way to describe it is that she never stopped loving him. Instead, he tells her, “There’s probably always going to be a part of me that will always love you.” And that makes her heart beat so fast in her chest. It makes her pulse just start slamming. And then he says, “But we’re not very good for each other anymore.”

He tells her that he was right from the start, and he wants to listen to that voice of reason inside of him. That was the voice that told him that being with her would result in losing her forever. He tells her that if he never had his surgery, then they’d still be friends.

She corrects him. She tells him, “If you never had your surgery, you would probably be dead by now.”

“Probably,” he says.

He tells her that the voice of reason in his head is telling him to save himself and keep his distance, because the more time he spends with her, the more old wounds just get dredged up. And the memories just make him feel bad. He remembers acutely — what it felt like to lose her — and he can’t go through that again. He doesn’t want to put himself through that terrible shit again. He does not want to let her back into his life, let her just make him love her again, and he doesn't want to just wait for it to end — because it always fucking _ends._ Last time, she told him to risk it — and she told him that the risk would be worth it. He fucking loved her so much. And she just _left him_ like he wasn’t worth fighting for. And it took him far longer to get over her than the entire length of their relationship. They were only together for a year. He has to live the rest of his life.

He tells her that the last month has been really terrible and emotional for him. It really hurt to have her freeze him out. And it made him realize just how fucking bad she is for him — how easily she makes him feel so sad.

He says, “You love me until you decide that you don’t. I think it’s better if we just keep it strictly professional. I don’t think we should be friends.”

 

 

 

 

 


	24. Girl loses boy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Grey breaks Missandei heart into a million pieces, she goes about trying to collect the pieces so that she can try and put her heart back together again.

 

 

 

  
Obara sighs when she sees Missandei’s hunched figure slowly make its way out of her car, onto the curb, and through the apartment entrance. Obara’s phone vibrates in her hand and she accepts the call on the first ring. She says, “Buzzing you up. Get your hand off the button.”

Missandei is a total mess when she appears at Obara’s front door. Missandei has decided to just live out loud. She has decided to wear her heart on her face. In the past, she kind of acted out in a bunch of counterintuitive ways to prove that she was okay after a man broke her heart. For instance, when she found out that Jared cheated on her, she tried to give Grey a blow job and it blew up in her face. Only figuratively and not literally because she is the fucking _worst_ at being sexy and he had a medical issue. This time around, she’s older and probably just the barest bit smarter. She has learned that there’s no better way to get past her feelings than to just go through them.

Obara sees that Missy’s face has been rubbed raw at the nose from tissues. Her eyes are swollen and tinged red. She’s wearing her thick-rimmed glasses. Her hair is a tied bundle on top of her head. And she’s wearing a fucking blanket out in public.

“It’s a poncho,” Missandei explains. And then her lower lip quivers really dramatically. And then her eyes slowly become wet. She sniffs.

“Shit,” Obara says. “Didn’t I tell you that _that motherfucker_ was gonna _mess_ you _up?”_

 

 

  
Obara asks Missy if she is hungry or thirsty or cold. Missy is none of the above. She just collapses on Obara’s couch and grabs a throw pillow to hug in her lap. On the couch, in a cuddle with Obara, which is pretty weird because Obara usually has pretty defined body contact rules, Obara softly asks Missy if Missy has been displaying her really depressing one woman show to the people. How have things been at work?

Missy tells her that work has been fucking terrible — but also fine and normal. The staff doesn’t know because he’s so fucking smart and he told her to be discreet about her fucking desperate love for him. She doesn’t like, cry all the time at her desk or anything like that. She’s pretty good at saving the crying for more convenient times, like when she’s driving home or on her lunch break or in the shower so that she doesn’t know where her tears end and where the shower water begins. Missy tells Obara that she is going to die alone and lonely. She tells Obara that she’s never going to get to have sex ever again because he doesn’t even fucking _like_ her anymore so she might as well just tape her stupid vagina shut because it is just _over_ for her. She’s never going to be held in his arms ever again.

At that, Obara squeezes Missandei tightly, also leaning in to give her a big kiss on the cheek.

Missy says, “Thanks, Obie. Thanks for trying. But it’s just not the same.”

 

 

  
There was apparently some sort of custody hearing that she was not invited to because when Gendry comes to town again, Missy gets a call from Yara who tells her that they’re all getting together for dinner, and it’s okay that Missy goes because Grey said he will not go. Missy is like, oh, great. It has gotten to this point. Fucking great. They have to trade off weekends. Missy says, “I messed up. I blew it so bad with him. He’s so great and awesome. And I’m so _sad,_ Yara.”

Yara completely does _not_ want to be in the middle of this whatsoever. Grey is one of her best friends. Missandei is one of her best friends. She doesn’t want to choose sides or allegiances or whatever. She just wants to go out and drink with them and just crack jokes about how Jaime was called sir repeatedly at a conference and was talked to like he likes to fax things and it was great! It was so great! Yara just wants for the both them to be happy, whether it’s together or apart. And Grey is not wrong. Yara _does_ remember how unhealthily obsessed with each other they were in their relationship. She also remembers having to wade through long days of filming with a guy that was just dying inside, so she would rather not see him go through that again.

Oh shit. She’s Team Grey. Fuck.

Yara says, “Babe. I know you are sad. But buck up. Hanging out with some friends and eating good food will help with the sadness.”

 

 

  
Everyone has gone through this before — their break up. This feels like deja vu to everyone, so no one really wants to talk to her about it at length. They have a tolerance for about maybe twenty minutes of discussion and analyzing, but after that, they start changing the subject.

Drogo is really uncomfortable talking about it because of their work situation and probably because of his unyielding loyalty to Grey. It will always be bro before ho for Drogo, but this time, Missandei is expecting it so it stings less. She has one conversation about it with Drogo, and Drogo remains steadfastly noncommittal. He keeps saying that it’s just a tough situation. He keeps saying that they are both his friends and he just wants to support the both of them. He keeps saying a shit ton of _nothing._ It makes her miss the days when he used to be inattentive, and he used to carelessly tell her to just fuck the guy already. All her problems would be solved if she would just be a girl that closes her eyes and fucks the guy. She sometimes misses _that_ Drogo. At least then, he had a point of view and he had a stance.

So she tells herself that Drogo doesn’t really owe her anything. She refrains from crying all over him and burdening him with her feelings.

Dany is a robot person and is terrible with feelings sometimes — and Dany keeps expressing that she just doesn’t understand Grey sometimes. Dany says it’s pretty obvious what should happen. He cares about Missandei. Missandei cares about him. They know what it’s like to have sex with one another. Just rinse and repeat. Just rinse and repeat. Dany sighs and says men are sometimes such basketcases, before just shrugging and moving on with her day.

When she tries to talk to her brother about it — Mars does not even know what to do with his sister when she is crying into her hands at his kitchen table. He feels so helpless and so useless. She tries to talk to him about the sense of loss she feels, but he can’t really get past these ideas that he has in his head about what he should be doing and who he is. He believes that he’s her protector and he’s supposed to keep her from harm. He feels self-pity, because he is just so bad and keeping his sister happy and safe. He can’t deal with his sense of shame, so he gets angry instead. He tells her that Grey is a fucking bitch. Grey has always been a fucking bitch. Grey is a fucking stuck-up bitch who has a fucking problem because how could anyone not fucking love her? She is so worthy of love. Mars tells her, “Just say the word, and I will go fucking beat his ass. Just say the word, and he’s _dead.”_

She doesn’t want to hurt his feelings — so she doesn’t say this to him. But she wants to ask him if he really thinks that she currently has the capacity to deal with his excessive masculinity right now. She wants to ask him if he really thinks that physically hurting Grey like she is a doll whose honor needs to be defended is the best way to go about expressing his support for her when it’s probably a million times easier just to _listen_ to her.

For Missandei, none of this feels like _enough._ What is unfair is that her friends have actually gone through this break-up with just one half of them — with just Grey. Missandei was gone — and she knows she’s a fucking terrible person that deserves no fucking grace because she was fucking absent. And because she was gone, she missed all of the emotional work that all of the people in her life pushed through to get back to normal and even. She gets why it happened like that — it happened because of circumstance. But it’s still fucking feels like she was robbed. It feels deeply unfair that her feelings are inconveniencing people.

When Gendry sees her though — she is reminded that there is at least one person in the world that knows what it took and what it meant for her to give up Grey. Gendry sees her gross and puffy face and he says, “Oh, goddamn. Not this again.”

 

 

  
So she generally stops herself from crying at dinner, because no one fucking wants to see this shit from her anymore. She sucks it up, and she listens to them make jokes, catch up on their lives, and excitedly talk about all of the good things that they have.

At the end of the night, she has to look through a haze of dark mood lighting as Gendry gets down on one knee in front of Arya, takes out a ring, and asks her to marry him. The whole place falls to a hush as Gendry says that he knows that they haven’t known each other for very long, but he knows. He just _knows._ And he knows that he loves her and he’s tired of being apart from her. He knows that he wants to spend the rest of his life with her. He wants to start the rest of his life with her.

Arya looks shocked. And then she says yes.

Missy takes a massive bite out of her messy pork sandwich, smearing chipotle sauce and avocado all over her mouth, and she trades this look with Yara and Obara. She slowly shakes her head in resigned disbelief.

 

 

  
She ends up just dealing with the end of them quietly, by herself. It’s familiar — the feeling of aloneness as she deals with heartbreak. Gradually, day by day, the immediate pain lessens. She goes into work and she has entire conversations with him about content strategy. She sits in meetings with him and clients and she laughs at some of his tepid jokes. She shakes hands with people firmly and with conviction.

She can _feel_ Drogo’s relief, and she gradually gets a better handle on her emotions. She can feel Drogo’s warmth come back. He asks her if she’d like to grab dinner soon and catch up. She knows that he would prefer if she didn’t talk about Grey. She knows that he’d prefer it if she just appeared pretty and smiling and just normal and happy and healthy.

 

 

  
Due to her emotional state, her ability to give many shits plummets to an all-time low. Sarah tests her. Missandei decides that they will only go on one vacation. That vacation will be to Naath, because that is where they come from and they should all know where they come from. That is the trip, take it or leave it. Sarah whines and says she does not want to go to Naath.

Missandei says, “Okay. Then stay home.”

 

 

  
The next time she sees Grey in a casual outside-of-work setting is when Pod and Sandor visit. It was a predetermined date that they all agreed on months prior. When it’s her turn to greet Sandor, he hugs her hard, and he picks her up so that one of her heels flops down and kind of falls off her foot.

They are eating hot pot. A few of them make these comments about that one time in Yin when they were eating crew dinner and it was hot pot — and Grey was hacking up a lung because he was dying and bent on pretending that he was totally fine. A few of them muse over that, and a few of them laugh. She does her best to laugh along with it too, to look like she’s having a good time.

Pod brings up her boyfriend. She gives him a sardonic smile. She bluntly tells him that he misunderstood the joke. The joke is that Gendry is not her boyfriend because she has no boyfriend. She was kind of notorious — for not having boyfriends.

She’s sitting with her bare legs crossed in a booth, when Jaime walks up to her and holds out his prosthetic hand. She looks at it warily.

He says, “Dance with me.”

She takes his hand.

 

 

  
As they sway together, with her hand in his warm left hand and right arm loosely holding onto her body, she says, “You hate to dance.”

He says, “You looked like you could use a buddy.”

She gives him a tired smile. “And you decided to be a hero.”

“I really cannot resist a damsel in distress.”

 

 

  
At the end of the night, she’s really sleepy and she does not even care how weird it looks that she goes down the line giving everyone full-bodied hugs except for Grey. She gives Drogo a hug. She give Jaime a hug. She gives Sandor a hug. She gives Pod a hug. She gives Brienne a hug. She gives Yara a hug. And then she just mindlessly salutes Grey with two fingers and says, “Night, boss,” before she cinches her jacket tighter around her body and walks to her car in the dark.

When she gets home, she kicks off her shoes and collapses onto her bed without bothering to remove her makeup. She yanks off her shirt and unhooks her bra and shimmies her skirt off, sitting naked in bed for a while, checking her emails for a little bit.

She spots her camera, peeking out of her bag.

She suddenly gets up from her bed to go look for her tripod.

 

 

  
Drogo’s adrenaline is pumping as he rides the elevator to the fourth floor. It’s eight in the morning and he has probably not been up this early in _years._ He’s getting a slight headache as he walks like he is on a mission, through the office front door. He sees the light on in Grey’s office. He sees the door cracked.

He lightly raps on the wood to get Grey’s attention. Grey looks up and away from his computer screen. Grey says, “Whoa, what the fuck? Do you know what time it is?”

“Did you see this?” Drogo says immediately, holding up his phone. There is a picture of Missandei, naked, on his phone. She posted the picture the other night on her Instagram.

“Yeah,” Grey says. “I saw that.”

 

 

  
She expects to get a lot of shit and a lot of creepy comments and a lot of anger-inducing commentary about her body — and that _definitely_ happens. But she also gets a text message from Yara early in the morning that says, “BAMF,” and nothing else. She also gets several calls from her brother that she just lets go to voicemail. He quickly switches over to texting, and he is _hysterical._ He wants to know if she fucking lost her ever-loving fucking mind. He wants to know what he’s supposed to say to his daughters. He wants to know _when_ she is going to take the picture down. He wants to know what the _fuck_ she is _thinking._

Dany texts her, too. Dany reminds Missy that the internet likes pictures of conventionally beautiful women, undressed and provocative. The text message makes Missy laugh out loud.

 

 

  
When she gets into the office — of the staff that is there, half of them are grinning at her and the other half cannot really look her in the eye. She doesn’t even get a chance to crack the tension with a joke before Drogo shouts out her name and tells her to please come into his office right now, please.

She finds that Grey is also in Drogo’s office. Oh awesome. They’ve been talking about her naked picture.

Drogo shuts the door. He says, “What is this?” He’s holding up his phone with her nude on it.

She says, “It’s a picture of me.”

He looks irritated and like he’s not at all in the mood for jokes. And she _hasn’t_ even made a _joke._ He says, “What is the point of this?”

There’s a lot of stuff she can say — if this was actually a serious conversation and he was genuinely curious instead of what this actually is — which is an admonishment. If this was a serious conversation and he is genuinely wondering, she’d tell him that she’s historically had a really hard time getting her photo taken, and that there are all of these gender politics around the bodies of women and what the purpose of these bodies are and the role that men play in it all. She would tell him that she is still afraid but she is trying to be less afraid. She would tell him that it was probably easier for him back when she was aimlessly snapping pictures around town like a hobbyist and he could feel secure in his expertise as he told her that she was pretty good at her little pictures. She would tell him that his desire to protect her virtue is . . . like, it is there. It is a response that she has anticipated. Her brother is fucking blowing up her phone, right now. She’s had to mute it so that she could mute him.

Missy says, “It’s a self-portrait. I just wanted to take a picture of myself.”

Drogo feels like she’s playing some sort of mind game because Grey fucking broke her brain and her heart. So he moderates how harsh he can be. He says, “You have got to be fucking kidding me.” And then he says, “Marge is about to get her wish. I think we need to get her to consult on this.”

 

 

  
After Drogo leaves his own office, presumably to call Margaery, Grey and Missandei are left there alone. It’s probably the first time they’ve been alone since that conversation they had — when he told her he was done with her and they weren’t going to be friends again.

She kind of wants to tell him it’s not what he’s probably thinking. She’s not fucking acting out. She’s not trying mess with him because he broke her heart. She’s not doing this from a place of pain. She’s not doing this because of him in the way that he thinks. She is not trying to make him jealous. She is not doing any of that. This is for her. This is how she is moving on.

“Hey,” he says. “When you do this stuff, you have to always do it outside of the office. Do it at home.”

Her mouth drops open in surprise. She looks at him questioningly

“This means no photo editing in the office. Don’t use our software on your work computer ever on this, okay? Don’t bring in these files and house them on our servers, not for a minute.”

“What?” she says. “I don’t understand.”

“When you came on board with us, you signed an assignment of inventions agreement,” he says. “We own all intellectual property that you create in these walls or when you are out and about representing us.” He pauses. “So I’m saying — never bring your personal work into this office. You got it? You need to own your work.”

Realization hits her, and it hits her hard. She looks at him, and it’s impossible for her to not feel so much when she looks at him. It’s impossible for her to stop feeling the way she does about him. She whispers, “Thank you.”

 

 

 


	25. Missy gets naked a lot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Missy gets a lot of interest because of her cool and alienating art. A heat wave hits King's Landing and makes everyone nuts.

 

 

  
Drogo asks Grey what they are gonna fucking do about their Missandei problem. Grey plays dumb and he asks Drogo which problem Drogo is specifically referring to. Drogo looks at Grey like Grey is a fucking idiot who is not cute. Drogo tells Grey, “I’m talking about her current mental breakdown.”

Grey calmly says, “I mean, she hasn’t punched any computers or threatened to kill anyone — that I am aware of.”

Drogo says, “How can you be so fucking chill about that? You, of all people, should be freaking out right now.”

“Why?”

Drogo is actually not sure what point he is trying to make here. He is just acting and feeling on instinct. He currently cannot draw a line between his own human inconsistencies. He cannot take how he feels about Missandei’s naked body, arranged non-sexually on her bed, and compare it to his adamant stance on Jaime being a Disney princess. Drogo told Jaime that Jaime was obsessed with optics and how Brienne looks because Jaime is fucking insecure. Drogo cannot correlate how he feels about Missandei’s naked body with the time he told Grey to back off with the interrogation on whether Drogo slept with her or not, because she is allowed to live her life. Besides, Drogo would never dick over his friend like that — _twice._ He would not sleep with a woman that his friend has laid claim to, even if it was a non-verbal claim — _twice._ Drogo is better than that, and he has this belief that he has made a lot of advances over the years in terms of his own sexism. There are things that he understands now because he is older. And he cannot match how he feels with how he currently identifies. Drogo says, “Because your ex is showing _everyone_ her _business_ online.”

“Yeah,” Grey says. “Her business is not my business.”

 

 

  
King’s Landing experiences a bit of a heat wave. He’s been sweating and staring at her naked body a lot lately. He’s been looking at it in an entirely different way than the way that he used to look at her naked body.

Missandei doubles down on a winning formula and posts another nude self-portrait — this time of her brushing her teeth in front of a mirror. She makes no effort to hide her camera setup, which can be seen in the reflection of the glass. Grey supposes that that is the point. A part of him is tempted to ask her for the original hi-res file, because it’s hard to see jack on a small screen. He understands that the intent is for this to live on small screens, but just from a technical standpoint, he’d like access to the hi-res and probably also the original RAW format so he can look at how much editing was done. Naturally, he cannot ask her for the image files without coming off wildly inconsistent. He cannot really talk to her about her thought process, without coming off wildly inconsistent.

So he just makes himself go on with his life. He goes to work. He sweats. He works. He talks to her and to his other employees. He works some more. He eats. He works. He sweats. He works and he works and he works. And then he goes home where the AC is really nice, and sometimes he reads a little bit.

She now has thousands of followers. There have been a little bit of press on the studio, mostly on the CD — her. Much of the press have been write-ups from critics of varying credentials, many of whom are trying to decide whether these mundane-looking naked pictures of her are art. And if what she is doing is art, is it good art? And if it is art, is it also still pornographic? But is it exploitative? Is it exploitative if it’s a self-portrait? What about the fact that she is Black and female? What does this say about the bodies of Black women?

And then there are comments on the actual photos, which he can’t really read very much of because they make him so angry, and they just make him hate people so much. But he supposes that is also the point.

 

 

  
The first comment that he hears regarding her photo series that truly bothers him is when their part-time IT guy comes in for a check up and acts nonchalant as Missandei goes about her business obliviously. It’s when she’s chatting in the breakroom with Meera that Ernie goes up to Yoren to nudge him and say, “Man, Grey used to hit that? Luckyyy.”

Ernie obviously didn’t expect Grey to be eavesdropping and Ernie obviously didn’t mean to be offensive. He just randomly blurted it out because he and Yoren have lightly gossiped before — about Grey and Missandei having dated at one point, back when they were younger. Ernie and Yoren have lightly talked about how she does not date coworkers, and how that is a shame because she is so hot.

Grey walks up to Ernie and Yoren. And to both of them, he says, “Stop it.” And that is all he says before he walks off to head to a meeting. The action is oblique to the others. His intention and his meaning was not super clear.

But it’s enough for Ernie to randomly walk up to Missandei and apologize — for what — he’s not completely sure. He tells her that he’s sorry if he ever makes her feel weird. She looks at him quizzically and pats him on the shoulder. She tells him that he generally does not make her feel weird.

 

 

  
Mars is not good at handling her new-fangled notoriety. There are only actually a small number of people in his circle that have seen the pictures and can even correlate the pictures to his sister Missandei — two people to be exact — and it’s only because they work for him and they have seen Missandei come and go, sometimes helping out in the stockroom. They actually chatted her up and naturally became friends with her on social media. And then she fucking started posting up naked photos of herself.

He tells her it’s fucking gross and she is just not respecting herself. She keeps telling him that her body doesn’t seem like it’s that gross. And she also thinks that she respects herself fine. She asks him what the big fucking deal is — what is his fucking problem with her fucking body? What does he think is going to happen to her? What does he think is going to happen to the girls if they see the nude photo of her eating dinner by herself on the floor in her basement apartment?

He tells her, “I promised Mom and Dad I’d look out for you.”

She comically raises her brows and says, “When? When did you tell them this? Did you tell their ghosts this in prayer? Did you go visit their gravestones and talk to them about me?”

“I fucking told them retroactively when I was by myself!” he snaps at her. “Christ, Missandei!”

He can’t find the words to tell her why her naked pictures bother him so much. He just doesn’t fucking want perverts looking at pictures of his sister. He doesn’t want perverts getting off to pictures of his baby sister. He doesn’t want the assholes that he knows — who are fucking perverts — to look at his sister in _that_ way.

She doesn’t have the guts to hurt him, so she doesn’t have the guts to remind him that he used to leave her alone in their apartment with his adult male friends all the time. His adult male friends used to corner her when she was going through puberty, and they used to tell her that she was going to be hot or beautiful or pretty when she grew up, like she should be honored to be thought of in that way, by them. His friends used to make her kiss them, and that used to be a really fun and scary and disorienting game. Right now, she is just giving the people what they want.

 

 

  
She has seven naked selfies under her belt and she’s been getting a lot of calls and inquiries, professional and otherwise. The otherwise is really not what she has interest in at all, so Margaery has been a really great filter, in blocking out the noise so that she just has the time and energy to focus on the actual work. Marge has told Missy that it’s actually a really inconvenient time for Missandei to leave and go off the grid for two weeks. There is currently so much interest in her, and she should strike while the iron is hot.

Missandei says she does not care. She does not want to accumulate more money — this has been something she has expressed repeatedly, so Marge really needs to figure out a new way to motivate her to do press — because she does not fucking want more side work so that she can make more money. She is probably almost done with her nude selfies. The point has been made. She will probably start taking pictures of her food in Naath pretty soon, except she probably has to make another account to house those photos because the naked photos really took on a life of their own and she doesn’t want to dilute them with pictures of meat and grains.

Margaery is not even paying attention because Missandei is boring her so bad.

 

 

  
Margaery is fanning herself with her hands and trying not to pit through her blouse, as she tells them that they are actually doing a really fucking great job marketing themselves and stirring up press. She tells them to fucking keep it up. They are so hot right now, literally and figuratively. There is so much buzz right now. She says that she’s going against her own self-interest, but she is going to tell them the truth — which is that they probably do not need her for public relations or marketing. But they may need her for media relations — only because they are probably too busy to deal with it themselves. She suggests that they contract her for that.

Marge smirks at them and then she zooms in on Drogo. She says, “What are you working on? What is that genius brain gonna come up with to give these two a run for their money?” She gestures to Grey and Missandei.

Drogo is pretty fucking sick of the heat and he’s sick of being just adequate at his job — and he’s not a hot girl that can just take off his clothes and amass thousands of followers overnight. He didn’t even know or predict that this would be the fucking sensation that it is. He has no fucking taste or feel for this shit. So he shrugs. And he says, “Man, do not put that kind of pressure on me.”

“Your fucking office is _terrible,”_ she proclaims. “How do you even stand it?”

“It’s a really old building,” Grey says mildly. “We’re going to die if it catches on fire.”

They all shift their gazes over as Missandei snorts out a loud laugh, dropping her shiny face down toward the table. She looks up at their questioning expressions. She says, “It’s funny! We’re in a death trap!”

Grey shakes his head. He says, “I don’t think it’s up to code. I think we’ve been grandfathered in. I think it’ll cost tens of thousands to retrofit, and that’s why the landlord is like, oh shit, do you guys wanna sign a five-year lease?”

Her giggling is physical and largely silent because she’s trying to pipe down now. But the heat is oppressive, and he’s kind of bizarrely hilarious. She and her curls are bouncing from the strain of not laughing out loud.

He covers his mouth with his hand, trying to cover up his own amusement. He acts like he’s just rubbing his chin.

“I don’t see why this is funny,” Margaery says in a clipped voice, gathering up her devices and throwing them into her purse. “You’re endangering my life right now. I’m leaving.” The meeting is over anyway.

 

 

  
She is due to hand off her projects to Yoren before her first legit vacation in — seriously — ever. She goes over her workload and project statuses with Grey and Yoren. It’s all well-documented, so it’s mostly just an overview for propriety's sake.

She’s been wearing sheer blouses and sleeveless shirts. She’s been wearing shorter skirts. Meera has been making quiet jokes about why Missandei doesn’t just take off all her clothes and just work naked. Like, that can be picture eight. It can be a photo of Missandei naked while the rest of the staff is clothed.

Missandei is kind of feeling that. But she tells Meera that she probably should not get naked at work. Because it might make some people feel uncomfortable — and here, she actually means Grey, specifically. It would make Grey feel uncomfortable, and she’s not about that life anymore. Also, her series has been commandeering a lot of undue spotlight because of its natural sensationalism. It might be distracting from their actual work and what they actually produce for clients.

Since it’s been so hot, Missy has brought in a box fan and she has shoved it into the window next to her desk. She has been blowing air on herself selfishly for weeks now. The entire office has been trying to lifehack better air circulation. They have to turn the music up louder to drown out the drone of fans. Since it’s been so hot, they’ve been just getting on each other's _nerves._

 

 

  
Grey has a tendency to talk in very short fragments when he gets tired or overwhelmed. His ability to properly articulate complete thoughts just dies when he has a lot of balls to juggle. Missandei and Drogo actually have no issue understanding Grey. Yoren has worked for Grey for about three years and has not developed the same kind of fluency. All week, Grey has been saying benign stuff that makes _no_ fucking sense, like, “Hey, Pentos stuff done?” It has made Yoren want to ask what Pentos stuff? They have a lot of Pentos stuff? What specifically is this _stuff?_ And does Grey mean _done-done_ or just first-level done? Does he mean ready for hand-off or does he mean draft is ready for check off?

And then Yoren works himself into a frenzy of nerves and resentment because he does not understand why he has to do most of the heavy lifting when it comes to fucking communicating with his boss. He does not understand why his boss doesn’t just spend an extra microsecond just tossing in a few more fucking clarifying words.

And then Yoren watches Missandei breeze by and say, “Not complete, but tomorrow,” before she runs off to do whatever the fuck. And then Grey leaves Yoren’s desk because he is satisfied with the response. And then Yoren has to _pick his ass up_ and walk over to Grey, expending _so much_ energy in this fucking heat. And he has to say, “Hey, what are we talking about exactly?” And _that_ is when Grey snaps at him and says crazy bullshit like, “I can’t just make assumptions on the status of projects, Yoren!” And Yoren is like, what the fuck. This asshole talking to him like he is messing up when he is _not._ And Yoren’s been holding it inside so deep and so dark because he is not a person that just lashes out and yells. He’s _not_ a person that treats other people unfairly.

But then in the handoff meeting, there’s talk of font not rendering properly for Yoren and just for Yoren. Yoren is like, “Do you want me to adjust to fit?”

And then Grey looks like he’s stopping himself from rolling his eyes, and Grey and is like, “No. Please leave documents as-is.”

And Yoren just _cannot_ fucking take _this shit_ anymore. He slams his pen and his notepad down on the conference room table, startling both Grey and Missandei. And he pushes out from the edge table and he says, “Fuck this shit!” He is displaying his displeasure so transparently. He says, “I can’t even fucking think straight. It’s so fucking _hot_ in here! I’m so _uncomfortable! Fuck!”_ He shouts, “I am going downstairs to get a beverage with ice! I can’t stand _this_ anymore! Fuck this shit!”

And then he completely just flounces on outta there as everyone watches in shock, as he shouts indecipherable expletives on his way out. He grabs Pyp at the door, because he apparently wants the company.

 

 

  
“Wow,” Missandei says in awe, staring at the spot that Yoren just vacated.

“Yeah,” Grey says. “Overreact much?”

“Wow,” Missy says, slowly shaking her head. “You _really_ triggered him. With _fonts.”_

“Oh my God,” Grey says derisively, sneering now. “He fucking triggered _me_ with fonts. Like, oh, okay, so the font isn’t rendering correctly on your machine so the solution is to fucking adjust fit based on the fucking whackass setting of your fucking _machine?_ Are you _fucking kidding me_ with this shit! He’s lucky I didn’t spit in his face!”

She smiles at him. He will forever be the fucking cutest to her. She says, “Yeah, man. I see how that was hard for you. I’m _really impressed_ that you didn’t spit his face.”

 

 

  
Against Grey’s desire to be absolutely productive all the fucking time, Drogo calls it a fucking day at three o’clock. He tells them all that they are all awesome and they all work hard except for Lommy but whatever — it’s fine — they can’t all be winners. Drogo tells them all to shut down their machines and to meet him downstairs at the restaurant bar because he’s buying the first fucking round.

Jojen runs down first, beating everyone else. He explodes into the restaurant and pumps his arms to the ceiling, letting the AC hit all over his body. He says, “Yusss!” in victory before he laughs and then makes his way over to Pyp and Yoren, who is in a much better mood now that he is not sweating to death.

Grey is trailing behind them with Meera, who is just annoying the shit out of him by telling him about these special fans that pull air in _and_ out. He’s trying to tell her to just shut her face already. He’s buying a portable AC unit for the office, for the fucking two days a year that it gets sweltering in King’s Landing. He will do this so that they will all fucking shut up about this already.

 

 

  
The entire conversation starts off innocently enough. Grey’s nursing his second alcoholic drink, pulling big gulps from his glass of water, and taking massive bites from his burger as the staff gossips a little bit about different clients. Pyp says that it’s really hard for him to understand Phage on the phone sometimes. And Grey snorts through a mouthful of his burger and says, “That’s ‘cause Phage is Black.” It comes out muffled. He also totally meant it as a joke — but also not. Like, this is really probably why Pyp has a hard time understanding Phage on the phone.

Pyp feels like he was just low-key accused of being kind of racist — and he feels like he should defend his own honor because his issue with Phage is _definitely not_ because Phage is Black. Pyp says, “That’s not why. He just talks really fast.”

“Don’t worry,” Grey says, chewing through his burger. “I’m Black.”

And Pyp’s brain is going, OMG, what does that even _mean?_

Missandei looks thoughtful as she says, “Sometimes when we are unfamiliar with certain accents, it’s hard to understand people. Like, sometimes I have problems with accents from the far north, due to lack of exposure. And like, Pyp has a problem with Black accents, probably because he doesn’t have many Black friends.”

“What!” Pyp gasps, scandalized. “I have Black friends!”

“Oh my God, name them right now,” Grey says. “Name them right now without thinking hard! Name your three Black best friends!”

“Um, um,” Pyp says in a panic. He says, “Phil!”

“What?” Missandei says, frowning at the name. _“Phil?”_ She holds out her hand expectantly, for him to put his phone on. “Please show me a picture of Phil.”

“I don’t think he’s real,” Grey says in a deadpan.

Missy looks at him. She says, “I don’t either.”

Grey looks back at Pyp, who is just getting so ticked off and pissed at them for how awkward and self-conscious they are making him feel for their own sadistic amusement. Grey says, “So who are your other two Black best friends?”

“I am still waiting for a picture of Phil,” Missandei says.

 

 

  
She has her bare legs crossed under the table and she’s slouched in her chair. Her body is oriented toward him as they have a quiet side conversation. He gathers up the guts to ask her about the naked selfies. He asks her how they came about — what seeded the idea and the concept?

She smiles at him softly as she decides to be honest. She lowers her voice and she tells him that it’s lots of things. It’s probably driven by her entire life and all of her experiences — the way she feels commoditized sometimes. The way he and Drogo debated on her merit and also her cost and her worth before they hired her. The way they all joke around about how she’s crazy or how she went crazy. The way everyone was so disgusted by her body when she was underweight. The way people look at her now that she is not underweight, but also not overweight. The way she used to run away from cameras that were pointed at her. The way she could not film in Harrenhal naked because she was too self-conscious. The way she was bad at phone sex with him. The way they used to take pictures of one another — how that felt to her. The way people hate it when she cries or gets too angry.

“I really like the series,” he says quietly, deliberately trying to ignore the phone sex bit. “I really like the pictures.” And then after a pause, he says, “Nice. That sounded adequately predatory and creepy. But I suppose that’s the point.”

“You don’t sound creepy or predatory,” she says back to him. “Honestly, it means a whole lot to me — that you like the pictures.”

“Yeah, they make me feel weird. In a good way. Not like, titillated. But like, kind of sad but also kind of tense.”

She laughs softly. She says, “Yeah. Thank you.”

 

 

  
When it’s time to say goodbye, once again, she goes down the line hugging everyone except for Grey. When she gets to him, she smiles at him. She says, “I’ll see you in two weeks.”

He grins back at her. He says, “Yeah. Have a good trip. See you in two weeks.”

 

 

 

 


	26. Drogo is in a relationship

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Drogo realizes that being in a relationship means that he probably has to spend less time with his one and only. Grey realizes that work sucks without Missandei. Jaime starts getting back into the game.

 

 

  
Neither Sarah nor her mom are motivated enough to get Sarah a passport or a visa in time for the trip. They’ve been stringing Missandei along for months, promising her they’d get it done. Missandei waits for them before buying the airline tickets — and in the time that she waits, ticket prices shoot up. It pisses her off, not so much for herself, but because they carelessly fuck Camille over. Camille is a good sport and just a bag of kittens because that girl tells her auntie that she’s been saving up all of her money from her part time job at the school cafe, so she can afford to pay the higher airfare, and Missandei has to be like, “Camille, stop it! I don’t even have time to have a cry break over how fucking cute and sad you are right now!” She tells this girl to save her money because Missy was serious about fronting the money for this trip back to the homeland.

Mars says that his ex Jen is a fucking shit show. Missandei asks him why he fucking had unprotected sex with her sixteen years ago then? He tells her that Jen used to be hot, and she used to be fun. Missandei frowns and says it must suck when motherhood changes how hot and fun a person is.

Both Sarah and Camille are only half Naathi, and Missandei thinks that Sarah’s current schtick of sass and don’t-give-a-fuck is just a front that shittily cloaks teenage insecurity and lack of strong identity. It’s not really something that Missandei wants to indulge in. So she watches in judgemental disbelief as Mars gives his younger daughter a wad of cash as restitution, because she is unable to go on the trip with her aunt and sister.

 

 

  
The night before the trip, Missandei tells her brother that technically, Sarah is choosing not to go because she does not currently care where she comes from. Why is this kid being rewarded for this?

He tells her, “I don’t want her to feel left out.”

Missy says, “She is willfully leaving herself out.”

He sighs. He’s tempted to remind her that she does not have children so she doesn’t understand all the ways that he can never win with his daughters sometimes. He can’t force his daughter into embracing her cultural heritage anymore than he can force _his sister_ to fucking stop taking her clothes off for the enjoyment of strangers on the internet. He has much less control over this shit than she realizes.

He asks her, “How am I supposed to make this shit cool? How am I supposed to make hours of fucking language classes on Sunday cool? How am I supposed to make annual death rituals fucking _fun,_ Missandei?”

“I dunno!” she says breathily, shrugging. “Maybe put some streamers up during the death rites party. Maybe get a jazzy cake.”

He points at her. He says, “The more you force it, the more they hate it, and the more they resist. At this point, I’m just trying not to make her hate it.”

 

 

  
Outside of the airport, Mars palms Camille’s cheek before he pulls her into a hug. He cradles her head and he says, “Do you have enough money, baby?” It’s a question he’s been asking obsessively. He’s actually been annoying her with this question. She doesn’t want him to control her with his money. He doesn’t see it that way. He just doesn’t want her to be fucking stranded somewhere without money and just fucking die scared and alone because she has no way of getting home and back to him.

She says, “Yeah, Dad. I have money.”

He unnecessarily says, “Listen to your auntie, okay? She’s a smart lady, and she’ll keep you safe. Have fun, okay? I love you, baby.”

 

 

  
Missandei tells Camille that the plane ride will be anti-climatic and then really dull and claustrophobic and long — because she is so freaking jaded — but then she keeps watching this girl just constantly look around at things in wonderment. She keeps catching this girl doing heart-squeezing stuff like studying the airline safety card like she’s going to be _tested_ on it. She catches Camille listening to every word the flight attendant says about emergency exits, oxygen, and seatbelts. The flight honestly just flies by because she gets wrapped up watching this girl stare out the window.

 

 

  
Drogo’s been spending a lot of time with her. Because he thinks that’s what he’s supposed to do. He’s been going over to Dany’s place after he gets off work every day. He has not been able to do a lot of the things in life that brings him joy. He has not been able to go climb rocks or trees for fun. He has not been able to go over to Grey’s place to play video games or to sleep over. Part of the reason he has not slept over at his buddy’s place for a while is because he accidentally told Dany about it, and Dany made him feel self-conscious because she derisively asked him if he’s a 36-year-old man or if he’s a fucking 12-year-old little boy.

He’s a man. He supposes.

They haven’t had much sex since they decided to make this legit. The sex that they have had was awkward and kind of boring. He has very little to say to her over dinner — but not really dinner. It’s really pre-calculated portions of her nutrition blocks that come in plastic containers. All of his worst fears about relationships are coming true. He feels fucking shackled to this person. All of the things he knows about relationships are resurfacing again. And he is fucking _determined_ to not cheat on her. He’s not going to cheat this time around. He just has to fucking nut up and break up with her before he feels like going off and cheating — which would actually not make it cheating. So at least he has a fucking game plan here.

“Hey,” he says, when he walks into her apartment. She’s on her elliptical. He has a bag of fast food in his hand. Because her nutrition blocks are probably expensive. And they are also fucking disgusting.

“Hi,” she says, breathing heavy.

He reaches out to touch the back of her thigh on a back swing. She’s damp and sweaty.

“Hey,” she says. “Can you eat that like, in the other room? Because I am smelling it, and it’s just — please eat that in the other room.”

He says, “Oh sure. No prob.” He lightly slaps her butt before he walks through her kitchen to get to the dining area.

They haven’t even been fighting lately.

 

 

  
With Missandei gone, he, Drogo, and Yoren have to work longer hours to cover some of her responsibilities. To him, it kind of feels like the good ol’ days when it was just him and Drogo working obscene hours, just them against the world. It’s fun for like, a day.

Then it becomes a total shitshow, and he hates it. The grind of constantly needing to put his eyes on things makes him realize how integral she has become. He cannot find the time to focus on any of his own stuff because the staff is constantly bugging him to approve drafts and cuts. They may think it is labor intensive to create and make these things in a way that meets scope, satisfies the client, him and Drogo, and do it all before deadline, but it’s not really a fucking picnic for him to look over upwards of twenty things over the course of a work day. The staff is fading back into some of their old habits — going to him a bit excessively, only because he is picky as fuck and they know that if they don’t get his buy-in consistently, he’s going to chew them out later.

Nonetheless, sometimes they cannot win. He snaps at Jojen when Jojen agrees to client change requests that Grey does not agree with. He doesn’t agree with the timing change requests on a video. He asks Jojen, “What is this stupid shit you are doing?”

“Well, they wanted —”

“I can _read,”_ Grey cuts in. “I know what they said they want. But they don’t actually fucking know what they want.”

“Okay?” Jojen says uncertainly. “What do you want me to do?”

“It would be awesome if you used your brain sometimes,” Grey says, just not caring if he is just ruining the shit out of Jojen’s day. “It would be great if I didn’t have to tell you, step-by-step, how to do your job.”

Jojen says nothing to that. He thinks this is unfair. He thinks that if Missandei were here, this would not be happening to him. He thinks that he’s not a mind reader and that he’s never going to be a mind reader. He thinks that Grey is just in a fucking mood today. Jojen just stands there and stares back at Grey, pretty much intent on just taking his punishment now.

Jojen’s silence reads a little bit like apathy to Grey, and it drives him _insane_ because he does not even fucking _understand_ why these people don’t _care_ enough. He does not understand why these people just insist on running around being fucking order-takers. He doesn’t understand how these people can look at the shit they are making sometimes and not go, oh, okay, that actually looks fucking idiotic. He says, “Go back to the client. And push back on this.”

Jojen honestly does not even think this is a big deal. The client is nice. It is fucking minor. Jojen thinks that Grey is fucking crazy and an asshole sometimes. Nevertheless, Jojen says, “Fine.”

 

 

  
The difference this time around is that Missandei has annoyingly imbued these kids with self-confidence, so they have stopped being so scared of him and they have stopped taking his shit lying down. They still take his shit because of course they do — but he has to work _so hard_ to make them fucking absorb it. Debates last twice and long, and they are constantly talking back to him — or asking their stupid clarifying questions. He catches Meera doing something he explicitly told her not to. He told her to package files with picture examples repeatedly. She created a spreadsheet. She tells him that the other agency she worked at didn’t deliver packages this nice. He wants to fire her ass on the spot because he fucking told her to fucking send picture examples and not a fucking spreadsheet. She plainly tells him that Missandei is okay with spreadsheets.

So he doesn’t fire her. Because she’s very good at her job, and he does not want to fucking train another fucking child off the street. He _does_ say, “Missandei is _not here_ right now.”

“Oh, I know!” Meera says. “You are so cranky!”

He wants to ask her what the fuck is with this fucking back-talking! Who taught her this!

 

 

  
The kids keep wanting Drogo — their mom — to mediate their arguments with their dad — Grey. But Drogo is fucking sleep deprived and overworked and overextended, too. So he does not have the capacity to take the kids seriously when they come crying to him because Grey said something that hurt their feelings. Grey says shit that hurts Drogo’s feelings a little bit all the fucking time. That is like, part of Grey’s charm. Drogo tells the kids to just fucking be adults and just take their hurt feelings and suppress it for another week. Because it’s just another week until Missy comes back to coddle them and listen to all of their stupid bullshit problems.

Drogo and Grey go back to only being able to work at night because they are too busy pushing shit out the door during the day. Drogo gets loopy and delirious as he runs through the same cut of a video for the millionth time. He asks Grey when they are going to do less production work. He also asks Grey what Grey wants for late night second dinner. Poke? The poke place delivers.

 

 

  
Grey forces himself to get out of bed — at fucking six o’clock in the evening on a Saturday night. He forces himself to put on some sensible clothes and some comfortable shoes. And then he pushes his body out the door because life is about balance and life is not just about work.

He’s yawning and his eyes feel dry and heavy when he spots his friends at the bar and waves to all of them with both of his hands. He slides into the booth next to Yara and he picks up a menu and starts reading through it as she pats him on his leg. She says, “Baby bear, you look rumpled and kind of sexy.”

He says, “Kind of?” He gestures to his plaid shirt. “I make this look _good.”_

“He has not been sleeping,” Drogo supplies. “So don’t let him drink. Unless you want him to pass out at the table.”

“Man, I do what I want,” Grey says. He means that he’ll drink alcohol if he wants. Coincidentally, he really doesn’t want to right now, but it’s his own choice. “D, what you getting?” He means food-wise. He wants to coordinate with Drogo because he wants to share food with Drogo. “You looking at the shank?”

“Yeah, man. You know I’m a slut for lamb.”

“Yo, man, I’m kind of feeling the mushroom, but like — there’s no meat.”

“Man, baby. If you want the pasta, _get it._ And then get a side of meat with it.”

“Like another entree?”

“No, that’s not what I was meaning, but like, I would totally eat three entrees with you, bud.”

“Man, is that too much food, though?”

“Man, it’s all good. You can take it home and save it for later.” Drogo reaches out to pat Grey’s stomach. Grey automatically squirms and jerks away from the touch because he’s been conditioned to expect tickling. Drogo grabs onto Grey’s arm and says, “Relax,” soothingly.

Jaime does not even know what the fuck he is witnessing right now.

 

 

  
Yara, Jaime, and Tyrion don’t even bother commenting on Grey and Drogo shit anymore. It’s not fun to make fun of those fuckers anymore. It’s just a fact of life for all of them now. Grey and Drogo are an island unto themselves sometimes.

Instead, Yara and Jaime asks Tyrion how it feels to get out of the house. Tyrion says he feels kind of guilty for leaving Sansa home alone with their child when he’s off having fun, but mostly he feels fucking _amazing_ and he might never go back home. He’s thinking about becoming a deadbeat dad and making Sansa a single mom.

Jaime tells them he kind of had a really positive interaction-slash-conversation with a woman at the grocery store. At first he thought she was staring at him because she recognized him from TV. There has been a resurgence of people bugging him on the street because their show is now streaming on Netflix. But anyway, that turned out not to be the case. She wasn’t staring at him because of his hand, either. She was actually staring at the sparkling water he was buying. She was interested in the brand and wanted to know if he thought it was any good. He told her that it’s the first time he’s buying the particular brand, so he does not know. She told him that she’s always tempted to buy it. He told her to just do it. Just try it.

That conversation lasted five minutes. Then she said bye and went to pay for her stuff. It was pretty cool.

“Jaime,” Tyrion says. “That was really a pathetic story. But I am so proud of you.”

“Thank, dude. I am proud of me, too! Ten years of therapy!”

 

 

  
He didn’t expect to see Dany tonight because she told him she was going to work late. But then she texts him in the middle of dinner to tell him that she finished early and asks him if he wants to come over. She’s actually asking, but he thinks that she’s making him because he’s so bad at relationships. He reluctantly looks up at Grey — they had these tentative plans to go watch a movie at Grey’s place — but really, the plan is probably to put on a movie and fall asleep on the big sectional in front of the TV and then probably go grab some dim sum when they wake up late tomorrow.

Drogo says, “Shit. I’m _so sorry_ , bud, but I gotta cancel on you.”

“Like, I’m free,” Jaime says, directing his comment to Grey. “Like, I have no plans. Do you want to watch a movie with me?”

“Oh my God,” Tyrion says, also to Grey. “Say yes to him! He’s so vulnerable right now!”

Grey laughs quietly. He shakes his head sleepily, because these fuckers are ridiculous sometimes. He says, “Yeah, of course. Come over, Jaime.”

“Hey,” Drogo says — just feeling inordinately kind of possessive. His body is not even cold yet. And hanging out and watching a movie is kind of his and Grey’s thing.

 

 

  
The trip has been just one elongated bit of exquisite torture. She keeps holding her breath and she keeps fighting to hold her tears at bay as she just watches this young person who shares her blood just look at everything like it is simultaneously new and amazing. This is a quality that is affecting to Missandei because it’s been so long since she’s looked at something with such open curiosity and awe.

On their last night, in a hammock, they swing with their legs dangling over the edge. She tilts her head into Camille’s shoulder as she listens to Camille be sad that they are leaving. Camille asks, “What else are you going to miss?” because this girl is just _obsessive._ All this girl wants to do is list out the things that they will lose and that they will miss once they step foot on a plane.

“Um, all of the vegetarian food options. I feel so _healthy._ My poops have been so regular.”

“I’m gonna miss the candy with the nuts.”

“You mean nougat? We have that at home. I can like, buy that for you at home.” Missandei is just saying things on purpose to mess with her niece now.

“It’s not the same, Auntie!” Camille insists, whining. “I will never have that exact candy again! At least not until next time. What else are you gonna miss?”

“Um, open-air markets. And jewelry stalls.”

“Yeah! And all the greenery. All of the vegetation. The cute little baby lizards.”

“I recall that the lizards actually scared the shit out of you.”

“Just on the first day! And only because I wasn’t expecting them!” Camille nudges Missandei. “Now, what are you looking forward to? At home?”

Grey. Probably just seeing Grey again.

But she doesn’t say that out loud because she doesn’t want her niece to take cues from her on this bullshit. Instead, she says, “Sleeping in my own bed again.”

“Yes!” Camille says. “I am excited for that, too! I’m also excited to see my dad and Darin. He’s been going nuts over my pictures. I can’t wait to tell him all about this!”

 

 

  
The time difference is relatively nominal, but on their first whole day back, Camille texts her aunt to tell her aunt that she is jet lagged! For the second time in her life! She is wide-awake at seven in the morning!

The text message makes Missandei laugh before she sends back a heart and shoves her phone underneath her armpit so she can dig in her purse for the office keys. She’s never been here this early before, but she’s been really excited just to get back into the swing of things. Two weeks off felt really decadent and almost excessive. She’s been a little worried about how they are all faring without her — if they have forgotten about her.

She’s trying to insert the right key into the lock when he gets out of the elevator. He hesitates for a moment — briefly and wildly considering just backtracking and just going back downstairs and grabbing coffee across the street or something to pass some time. He’s afraid to interact with her. But he realizes that he’s being a cowardly wuss about this.

He walks up to her just as she gets the door open. He states the obvious and says, “Hey, you’re back. And you’re really early.”

She straightens her back as her face feels flushed and her heart just starts pumping. She was expecting this — to just feel this way immediately — but it’s still like — it still feels killer. “Hi,” she says softly, staring at him for a beat just all sappy and pathetically so happy to see him. She’s trying to dial down her smile a few notches. She pushes the door open wider so that he can walk through first. It’s entirely weird and awkward because she’s like — she has to stand in the way in order to prop the heavy door open in her heels — and this is why people just walk through in order of first come first serve, but she’s in too deep now. She commits, and he awkwardly slides in past her, careful to make no body contact. But she can sort of feel his body heat and she can sort of feel the air that whooshes off him and that is like, _super_ nice.

In the office, she starts digging in her purse in order to kill some of the awkwardness. She says, “I brought some snacks. Naathi snacks.”

“Oh, cool,” he says, as he walks into the break room to make the first thermos of coffee.

She’s left kind of holding her bags and boxes of snacks like a real dork. But it’s cool. It’s fine. It happens!

She walks into the break room, and she starts putting the crinkly packages on the counter. She says, “Help yourself. I actually have like, buckets of this stuff at home.”

“Okay, maybe later,” he says, filling up his cup of coffee. “I’m not very hungry right now.”

“Oh, cool. Well, I’ll just go try and catch up on everything I’ve missed.”

“Cool. Let me know if you have questions.”

 

 

 

 


	27. Missy and Grey go to a party

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The ladies go wine-tasting. It's awkward until everyone loosens up with a drink. Or five. Grey and Missandei go to a really fun party together.

 

 

  
Yara just wishes Missandei would stop inviting their killjoy of an ex-boss to their fun activities because it makes the activities a lot less fun. Missandei keeps telling Yara that Dany is actually stealth fun. Dany is fun in a secret way.

Yara is like, “Oh, why doesn’t she try being fun in a transparent way?”

Dany is completely within earshot. Dany is like, standing two feet away, waiting patiently for the fun to start. She never purported to be fun herself. This is not how she advertises her social skills. She is a really great leader and a really incisive decision maker. But Dany doesn’t really excel in telling jokes like Drogo or casually breaking out in dance like Yara. Dany thinks that Missandei is probably falsely advertising Dany’s ability to be fun.

Yara bend over and reaches around Missandei’s body, lightly swatting at Dany’s arm. She says, “Hey, why don’t you try smiling more?”

“I don’t want to,” Dany says.

“Do you know it takes more muscles to frown than it does to smile?” Missandei says mildly, ever the peacemaker.

“Shut it,” Yara says, sounding harsh. She’s never mindful of anyone’s feelings.

They are loitering around in front of the winery entrance because they are waiting for Brienne, who is probably panic-driving right now because she is more than five minutes late.

When Brienne shows up, she is red-face and extremely apologetic. All of the apologizing makes Dany and Yara feel irritated and kind of uncomfortable. Missandei wants to know why Yara is being such a mean girl. She wants to know why Dany is not even trying. She wants to know why Brienne cannot simmer down a second and realize being ten minutes late is not a grave offense. Dany wants to know when this outing will be over because she’d like to go home and do some work. Brienne wants to know why she agreed to this because she does not like wine or female bonding.

 

 

  
Because Missy is the common thread between these disparate women, Missy feels _a lot_ of pressure to ensure that wine tasting goes well. They all have work in common — they all love to work. So she brings up work. She’s like, hey, girls! Let’s talk about what it’s like being professional women!

Brienne cautiously volunteers to go first. She twirls her wine around in her glass because she’s seen this done in movies and on TV. She smells her wine. It smells a whole lot like freaking wine. And then she tells the ladies that she's been having trouble obtaining program metrics because the initiative she’s working on is only in its second year. But the investors and funders are always like, wahh, what are the metrics?

“That’s a good story, Brie,” Yara says.

 

 

  
They start guzzling wine to get over the awkwardness, which is not at all how wine-tasting works. A number of winemakers get offended — rightly so — and start pushing back when Dany and Yara ask for more pours. A male winemaker who is old and not hot passive-aggressively tells Dany that this is not a frat house. And in response to him, Dany says, “Oh really?” And then she turns to another winemaker the next booth over and she says, “I want to buy a case of your Cab Franc.” And then Dany turns back and mean-mugs the not-hot old guy.

The other winemaker is super stunned and also really polite because that’s generally how this crowd rolls. She says to Dany, “Um, Miss. Do you want to taste it before buying it?”

“Oh,” Dany says. “Sure.” She hands over her glass.

Brienne is _beyond_ embarrassed and her face is the same color as the wine. Okay, not really. But it’s just fun to make fun of her for that. Brienne keeps thinking that these people work really hard to make their wine taste great — even though she cannot really taste the difference between the wines but that’s on her. It’s just sad when people work hard at something and a bunch of assholes just crap all over the hard work. That is like, something she is really sympathetic about.

Missandei is giggling and clapping her hands together because it’s just great — just great! — when Dany becomes fucking terrible like this. Missy feels really protected when Dany is like this.

Yara smacks her purple-stained lips and tilts her head, watching as Dany hands over her credit card. Yara says, “Yeah, I’m kind of aroused by what just happened.”

 

 

  
Dany asks Missandei to look up a restaurant that lets them bring in their own bottles. Yara tells Missy to find a restaurant with the cheapest corkage fees — but also one that has the very best fucking food. Dany tells Missy that she wants to eat something with _pork belly._ Missy reminds Yara that she is fucking rich. They all kind of are. Missy has her nose in her phone and she asks if the corkage fee is really that big of a deal. Brienne raises her hand and reminds them that she is actually not rich. She makes fewer zeros than they do. She probably makes multiple zeroes less than Dany does.

Yara misunderstands Brienne’s attempt at a reality check for them. Yara says, “Okay, okay. I’ll pay your portion of the corkage fee. Chill, babe. Shit.”

They are standing around in a park in the middle of the afternoon. Dany is having a hard time opening up one of the bottles she just bought with her bare hands so Yara randomly takes out a fucking _knife_ and is like, “I gotchoo, babe,” and then stabs the tip of her knife through the cork.

Missandei is like, “What the fuck.”

Brienne is like, “Wow!”

 

 

  
Missandei eventually finds they very best restaurant that meets all of their insane criteria. It’s a hipster noodle bar! She called the restaurant and there is apparently not even a corkage fee. Yara laughs and fondly reaches out to massage Missy’s shoulder with one hand.

Dany like, _loses her mind_ and just holds her head in her arms and she lets out a muffled, but really dramatic pseudo scream, startling the rest of them. And then she looks up at Missandei with such emotion in her face. She says, “My assistant _sucks.”_ She says, “You are so fucking _amazing._ Drogo and Grey are so _lucky,_ and I fucking _hate_ them.”

Missy says, “Again, I can do more than order lunch and make reservations at restaurants.”

 

 

  
They have to take turns drinking wine with cork pieces in it because they can’t take an open bottle into a car — that is what the first ride-share guy tells them when he rolled up and they tried to enter his car. He was like, “No! No no no!” And then after a brief argument, he drove away.

To pass some time as they work on this bottle, Yara shows them some of her new dance moves. There’s one move that involves punching the air.

 

 

  
At the hipster noodle bar with a fresh bottle of wine — Yara now thinks Dany is a fucking genius and pretty fun — a text message comes through on Dany’s phone. She holds her phone up to her flushed face and squints, trying to read the text. And then she loudly groans. She shows them her phone screen — and then flips it back around too fast for them to read. But it doesn’t matter because she says, “Fucking _Drogo_ wants to know where I am and what I’m up to.” She lets out another heavy and raspy groan before shoving a bunch of carbs into her mouth. Through her full mouth, she says, “He’s so fucking _needy_ and _clingy.”_ Dany sighs glumly. Her relationship is rather labor intensive, but she has been told — by Missandei and by her assistant Irri and also by this lady at the checkout counter of the nearest market by her apartment — that everything sounds pretty normal.

Then Dany mood flips and she says, “So do you guys want to have him come by? I want to be sure you guys are okay with it. I don’t want to ruin our night by having his presence here. He can do that.”

“Who’s he with?” Missandei asks hopefully. “Is he with anyone?”

Missy’s body slams into the side of the booth, arm first — then face second. Because Yara’s hand flew out and slammed her. Yara says, “Have some dignity for yourself sometimes, okay?”

Brienne is like, “Are you okay?”

 

 

  
Drogo clucks his tongue when he reads Dany’s text. Coincidentally, he _is_ with Grey because they are wayyy codependent and obsessed with each other. So he says to Grey, “Yeah, she’s loaded.” Drogo can tell she’s loaded because there are more typos and she is being super nice over text message. She tells him that it would be lovely if he stopped by and met them for dinner. They are in the middle of eating, but they can eat dessert while he eats.

Drogo says, “I think Dany’s with Missy. You wanna go or you wanna stay home? We can also go eat somewhere else? We don’t have to meet up with my fucking ball and chain just because she told me to tell her where the fuck I am _all the time.”_

 

 

  
When they show up, when she sees him — she gets struck so hard by shyness as her mind whirs a mile a minute trying to figure out what _this means._ She can’t even look at him as he mutely slides in next to Dany and lightly jostles her, laughing a little bit because he can tell that Dany is wasted. Missy's heart beat is steady, but throbbing, when he looks at her and says, “Hello,” like he didn’t just see her yesterday at work.

She says, “Hi. How’s it going?”

“It’s going good,” he says.

 

 

  
They sneak bites of each other’s desserts as Drogo and Grey eats their leftovers plus noodle bowls of their own. They inhale the food and then Grey says that the food is just okay. He says that he misses the variety and quality of food they used to get when they traveled all the time. He says he misses so much stuff about that life — but he’d never go back to it. She watches as Drogo guzzles down their bottle of wine for them. She watches as Yara sarcastically thanks him for taking care of that for them. And he shrugs and grins at her.

Brienne says there are lots of things to really love about that period in life — the show. They were younger. They were brasher. They were more uncertain, so maybe they were hungrier. She tells them that right now, it just sometimes feels like a tedious fight to maintain. She tells them, “Tormund wants to move here. We’ve been talking about it — him moving to be closer.”

“Oh!” Drogo says. “Cool.” He’s actually not sure if it’s cool. It just seems like the thing to say. “Would you guys live together?”

“That sort of would be the plan,” Brienne says.

“Cool.” He repeats. Then he adds, “Man, we all grew up and got kind of old.”

 

 

They are in the middle of telling Drogo and Grey how Dany shamed a winemaker because she’s a fucking asshole and how Yara apparently carries around a fat knife at all times — they are in the middle of cracking up and rolling around, shoulder to shoulder in the booth like a bunch of snuggle bugs when her phone vibrates on the dining table. Her screen illuminates with Sarah’s name. And Missy does a double-take in shock — because Sarah barely talks to her out of the blue, let alone actually call.

She says, “Sorry, it’s my niece,” to the rest of the table as she accepts the call, presses the phone to her ear, and covers her other ear with her palm to drown out some of the restaurant noise. She says, “Hello? Sarah? Are you okay?”

The rest of the table quiets down. They listen as Missy says, “Honey, honey — I can’t understand you. Sweetie, slow down. What happened?”

 

 

  
Missandei tells them that she has to go — her niece was crying over the phone and she’s stuck at a house party and wants to be picked up right away. Her brother is at work — and her niece was also distraught and also made Missandei promise not to tell Mars just yet. Missandei starts digging in her messy purse for her wallet so she can pay her portion of dinner, but Yara says, “Babe, don’t even worry about it. Go take care of your niece.”

Missandei sighs, shutting her eyes as her hand hits her keys. She left her car back at the winery. They took a cab to the restaurant because they were drinking. Oh, great. She has been drinking. She’s kind of drunk. _Great._

Her friends are making the same realization as she is. Drogo says, “Hey, I can drive you.”

“You just drank a beer and half a bottle of wine,” Dany says.

“I'll drive you,” Grey says, already trying to push himself out of the tight booth.

 

 

  
She doesn’t want to be a punk when he’s trying to do her a favor, but nevertheless, she asks him if he actually knows how to drive. Because she’s never seen him drive before in her life. Does he even have a license?

He says yes to both. He knows how to drive. He has a license. He will borrow Drogo’s car. He’s driven Drogo’s car before.

 

 

  
She’s too distracted by her niece and being completely freaked out and worried about what is happening that she doesn’t even have the time or the energy to be awkward and weird around him. She actually mutely and furiously texts Camille to ask Camille if she knows what the hell is going on — if she has any idea the kind of friends her sister has or _anything_ like that. Missy is sending a barrage of texts to Sarah, who has given her an address. She is telling Sarah to get out of the house and to wait for Missandei on the lawn or somewhere visible and safe. Missandei’s calls have been going unanswered.

Her phone’s GPS basically directs him where to go, and he just drives in silence for half an hour. The only sound between them is the ambient noise of Drogo’s car and the soft clicking on the phone as she hammers out message after message.

 

 

  
He’s barely had time to come to a full stop in the driveway before Missandei ejects herself out of the moving car. His heart leaps into his throat when she does that — because she scared the shit out of him when she did that. He quickly puts the car in park and kills the engine. He’s unbuckling his seatbelt and unlocking his door so he can follow her into the house.

 

 

  
When Missandei enters the house, a bunch of kids assume that she’s someone irate mom, and then generally move out of her way or they look at her in confusion when she asks them where the fuck is Sarah. She doesn’t even have time to look at the alcohol and all of the fucking underaged drinking at this party. She just starts stomping around the house, calling out Sarah’s name, pounding on random doors — opening them — scaring the shit out of children who are having sex with each other behind the doors in the bedroom. A girl is shrieking her face off, and Missandei just leaves the bedroom door open as she continues digging through this house for her niece. She shouts, “Sarah!” as she goes deeper down the halls.

Grey actually finds Sarah first. He remembers what she looks like, from when she was a kid. He recognizes her face. She recognizes him, too, so she doesn’t fight him much, or at all, when he grabs her wrist and pulls her to her feet. She’s been crying — her eyes are just voids of black eyeshadow running down her cheeks. It’s been a warm summer, so she is scantily clad and tripping over her heels as he yanks her from out of the backyard.

He shouts, “Missandei!” trying to get her to hear him through an open window, over the music. Then he takes out his phone and he sends her a text message.

 

 

  
Missy accidentally and carelessly shoves Grey out of the way when she gets within arm’s reach of her niece. She grabs Sarah, and she immediately pulls her into a breath-stopping embrace as she starts crying spontaneously. Grey stands around a ways back, touching the back of his neck, kind of looking around all of the drunk kids. And he’s thinking, Jesus fucking Christ.

Missy grabs Sarah by the shoulders. Missy scans her niece's face, and then her niece's body — Missy is like, wow, what the fuck is this child wearing — and then she feels Sarah’s clammy body start shaking in sobs again.

Missandei pulls Sarah back into her arms and she says, “Baby, you’re okay. You’re okay. I’ve got you. You’re safe.”

 

 

  
Her niece flashes her bare ass right in Missandei’s face as Missandei holds open the car door for Sarah to climb into the backseat. Then Missandei climbs in after her.

Grey asks where he’s supposed to take them.

Missandei says, “Let me get you the address to my brother’s house.”

Sarah says, “No! I don’t want to go my dad’s house! He’s going to be so pissed! Can we go to your place instead? _Please?”_

 

 

  
Missandei pretty much is assuming that child has been sexually assaulted in some way, and she constantly has to work so hard to keep her own emotions in check — she constantly has to stop herself from breaking down and crying in anger and just in helplessness — and it’s this context that drives her to agree with Sarah’s pleas to not go to Mars house. She has Grey drive them back to her place. She holds onto Sarah’s body tightly in the backseat. She keeps pressing kisses all over Sarah’s head as Sarah continues sobbing in her arms.

 

 

  
Grey takes one look around her tiny studio basement apartment and then shoves himself into the bathroom and shuts the door behind him so that Missandei’s niece can change her clothes. Missandei never tells him when they are done, so he just waits in there after he finishes peeing and washing his hands — for like ten minutes. In that ten minutes, he’s nosy and he looks at a bunch of her stuff, her combs, hair ties, toothbrush, makeup, perfumes, lotions — just all of her stuff. When he can’t take it anymore and he thinks it’s safe, he opens the bathroom door and he sees them sitting on Missandei’s bed. Sarah is dressed in Missandei’s clothes.

And then he jumps in surprise as Missandei starts yelling. She’s says, “Are you fucking _fucking_ with me right now, _Sarah!”_

 

 

  
He works hard to follow the conversation — or the screaming match. It’s a little hard because sometimes Missandei is incomprehensible and her niece is just savagely sobbing a lot. Grey has gathered that Missandei is pissed because Missandei thought her niece was “date raped” but actually her niece is just “a royal dipshit.” Grey has gathered that Sarah’s mother is away — not at home for some reason — and Sarah went to the party in “slut wear” — Missandei’s words — when she was not supposed to because Mars banned her from going. Mars apparently banned Sarah from seeing a boy who is bad. Sarah ended up sneaking out to the party by catching a ride with some friends to see the boy the next town over because her mom "freaking flipped out" and took away Uber. And then Sarah caught the boy getting blown in the bathroom by “that slut Ashley” — Sarah’s words — and she flipped out and was humiliated and got her heart totally broken. And she just wanted to go home right away, but the bus route doesn’t run through the neighborhood that late and her friends didn’t want to go home yet. She couldn’t call her dad obviously. Her dad can’t know because her dad _hates_ Russ.

“Oh, I fucking wonder _why,”_ Missandei spits, with the force of a million sarcastic tsunamis behind her. “Based on your description of him so far, he sounds fucking _amazing.”_ And then after a pause, Missandei shouts, “You scared the shit out of me and fucked with my head just because you needed a _ride_ and you didn’t want to tell _your dad_ that you are sneaking around with _a guy_ that is probably not going to go to college because he’s _stupid?”_

Sarah’s face crumples into a fresh bout of tears. She wails, “How could he _do this to me!”_

Missandei coldly says, “Because he’s _stupid_ and _not_ fucking college bound. What the _fuck,_ Sarah! Who gives a shit about him? Are you sexually active? Are you using protection so he doesn’t infect you with his stupid? Oh my God, I don’t think I want to know! Don’t answer that! Goddamn, are you _stupid,_ too?”

Grey spontaneously inserts himself into the conversation at this moment. By laughing. It makes Missandei look at him sharply. Oh shit. Accident.

He tries to convey to her that he didn’t mean to laugh out loud. It was an accident.

She turns her attention back to her niece and she says, “I’m gonna tattle on you. I’m gonna tell your dad _so hard.”_

 

 

 

 


	28. Missy tells the truth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Missy spends time with her difficult niece. Grey doesn't know why he keeps getting pulled into drama when he just wants to be a drama-free zone. Missy does something brave.

 

 

  
Sarah legitimately feels like her heart is breaking — like it feels like there’s a heavy ball blocking up her chest, making it hard to breathe, making her gasp and hiccup in between the crying bouts. She thinks back to just yesterday when they loved each other and made all of these plans together. He almost had enough money to buy a car, and he was telling her he’d come and get her whenever she wanted him to. He promised her he’d help secure her freedom. She thinks back to how he wrapped his arms around her body and asked her how he was going to live without her for two weeks — so she stayed home and didn’t go to Naath. She stayed so she could be wrapped up in him.

She tells her auntie that he’s not _stupid._ He’s in AP chem, and he’s on the debate team. She tells her auntie that he is actually very _smart._

She lifts her hands to her face and she presses her hands against her sobs as her aunt tells her to just stop it. Her aunt sounds so much like her dad, and her dad would just rather lock her up in a tower so that she never gets to grow up or be her own person ever. And Sarah just can’t take this from another person, so she curls into the bed, burying her face there, as her aunt asks her why she’s walking out in public showing her bits around like she has low self-esteem.

She might have low self-esteem, but she’s still just a kid. Into the bed, she miserably says, “You’re body-shaming me. You take naked pictures of yourself, and you show strangers. I don’t do that. I’m like, _wearing clothes_ at least.”

“Oh, _wow._ You did _not_ just say that to me!” her aunt says.

 

 

  
He is a bit of an awkward spot. It’s getting rather late, and he is kind of superfluous at this point. He is really ready to go home, but he doesn’t know when’s a good point to inject himself back into the conversation to say his farewells. He doesn’t know if he should do it while Missandei’s niece is calling Missandei a hypocrite or if he should do it during all of the pained sobbing.

Sarah says, “I don’t know how he can do this to me! I don’t know how it changed so fast for him when it still feels the same for me. I don’t get how he can love me one minute and then not love me the next.”

Missandei is angry and controlled, as she says, “He _never_ loved you at all. He’s not fucking worth crying over. _No boy_ is worth crying this much over. _Stop it!”_ She says it even as she is aware of her own hypocrisy, but sometimes what they know does not supersede how they act.

 

 

  
He goes into the bathroom to wet a face towel that he spotted the first time he was in there. He waits for the tap to warm up before dipping the cloth underneath the stream. He wrings it out.

Then he walks back into the room with it and a roll of toilet paper, and he nudges Sarah’s shoulder with his knuckles. He shoves the towel into her hand when she looks up. He says, “Clean your face.” She’s getting Missandei’s white sheets and blankets real dirty with her face.

Sarah unfolds the warm towel and starts roughly scrubbing her face with it. Her false eyelashes start falling out with the rubbing.

After a moment, she holds the soiled towel back out to him. He switches with her and hands her the roll of toilet paper. He keeps the towel in his fist as he sits a solid distance away from her, on the corner of the bed. He says, “I know it sucks right now. I know you feel like you’re dying inside. And I know you think you’re not going to get over it. But you know what? You will get over it. You’ll forget him eventually.”

Her face collapses as she starts crying again, staring at Grey. She whispers, “I don’t want to forget him, though.” She rips off a few squares of toilet paper before dabbing her eyes with the wad.

“You feel that way right now,” he says. “And that’s fine. You might feel different tomorrow or the next day. You might feel angry with him tomorrow, when you remember that he —” Grey pauses. He does not know an elegant way to say that Sarah’s boyfriend put his dick into the face of another girl. And that was a real bitch move. He opts not to continue the thought. She probably gets where he was going with that.

“I can’t stop crying,” she confesses.

“You don’t have to,” he says.

 

 

  
She watches his compassion, and she feels tense, ashamed, angry, deeply sad, and so fucking hurt. She blinks back her own tears as she walks over and pulls the damp towel from his hand, heading to the bathroom under the guise of cleaning up.

 

 

  
Once things calm down a little bit more — once Missandei catches him suppressing his yawns, she frowns and she says out loud that he’s been held captive all night. She says she has just realized this. Her brows are furrowed as she tells him that he should go home.

Sarah is cuddled up underneath the blankets and looking through her phone as Missandei asks her niece if she needs anything presently. Sarah says no, she’s okay.

Missandei walks him to Drogo’s car. He asks her, “Are you gonna be okay getting to your car tomorrow?”

“Oh, I forgot about my car,” she says. She sighs. “Yeah, I’ll figure something out. My brother will probably want to retrieve his kid, and he can probably drive me to my car tomorrow.”

“Okay,” he says, reaching for the door.

“Thanks a lot for tonight,” she says, hugging her arms around her own body. “Thanks for driving me to get her. And thank you for being an adult and for talking to her like you did.”

“Yeah,” he says blankly — because he doesn’t know what else he can say.

She doesn’t know what else there is to say either. She doesn’t want to ask him how long it took him to forget her. She doesn’t want to be defensive and say a whole bunch of things about how nobody loves someone one day and then wakes up not loving someone anymore. That’s now how it works. But it’s not the appropriate time to correct this misinformation. She says, “Have a good night.”

 

 

  
Missandei shuts off the lights and pulls back the blankets when she gets back into her apartment. She ties her hair up and then she lightly slaps Sarah to get her to roll over, to make room. Missandei crawls into bed next to her niece, and she tiredly sneaks an arm over Sarah’s waist for a cuddle. Sarah lets her. Into her niece’s sweaty head, Missandei whispers, “Do you remember when you were my little baby boop, and you used to climb all over me?”

“Yeah,” Sarah says softly.

She finds that sometimes it’s hard to accept that people have grown up and that people change over time. She finds that it’s actually hard for her not to act out all the wrong things she has learned, even in spite of her best intentions. “I’m sorry,” Missy says. “I’m sorry for yelling. And for not listening to you.”

 

 

  
They talk about boys until they fall asleep. Sarah keeps sniffing and pulling fresh sheets of toilet paper so that she can blow her nose and wipe her tears. Missandei says that boys can really mess up girls. And vice versa. Sarah wonders out loud if the male libido is so overpowering that Russ couldn’t help but cheat on her. Sarah is actually not so tactful. She actually wonders out loud about blue balls and how she will never know that pain, so maybe she will never understand.

Missandei says that Russ cheated on her because Russ is just an immature kid who has not learned to consider people’s feelings that much yet. Sarah says that Ashley is such a slut. Missandei says Ashley probably has really low sense of self-worth and is insecure and maybe has a turbulent relationship with one or both parents. Or maybe she went through puberty super early and watches a lot of trash TV. Sarah says that she’s being bad, and she’s slut-shaming another female. Ashley isn’t the problem. Ashley owes her nothing. It’s him who has wronged her. Missandei wonders out loud what they are teaching kids in schools these days. Because these are some very impressive talking points.

Missandei tries to explain why she thinks her naked pictures are different from Sarah being sixteen years old and wearing clothes and makeup like she is older. Missy asks out loud, who they are dressing up or dressing down for. Sarah says that she knows. She knows her aunt’s pictures are different. Because the pictures are really strange.

Sarah asks Missandei if she is back with Grey. Missy tells Sarah no. He’s just her boss now. Sarah asks Missandei if she would like to be back together with him. Missandei laughs and asks where this question is coming from.

Sarah says, “He’s nice.” And then a little reluctantly, she says, “He’s handsome.” It is reluctant because he’s extremely old, and she should probably be less superficial.

Missandei’s been trying to do this new thing where she tries not to lie to herself at the same time she tries to be honest with others. She says, “I really love him. But he doesn’t feel the same way, or he doesn’t want to feel the same way. And I have to respect that. So it’s hard.”

 

 

  
When Mars arrives at her apartment the next morning, Missandei lays both of her hands on his chest — kind of like she’s pushing him back — and she tells him not to freak out and get angry. Because his kid feels terrible enough as it is, so he should cut Sarah a bit of a break.

He manages to follow her advice. The three of them go out to brunch before retrieving Missandei’s car.

 

 

  
Things settle back into their normal routine after that. The buzz from her naked pictures has died down significantly — as Marge predicted — because Missy has not posted a new picture in a long while. That is fine. Marge has been asking her what she’s working on. Between work and her family, Missy has not had the time to work on anything. She tells Marge that she is not forcing it because she’s not like Grey.

Margaery assumes Missandei means she’s not ambitious or talented like Grey is. And Missandei is probably not, but that’s only because Grey is a unicorn. But Missy can be so much better than she currently is. Margaery thinks that Missy is being a self-minimizing woman about this, and it is off-putting to Marge. She starts giving Missy a pep talk, not out of the kindness of her heart, but because she needs and wants her clients to constantly pump out new content.

Missy cuts the pep talk short. She tells Marge that she misunderstood. She’s not like Grey because she does not live inside a tunnel where work and only work is the only thing she can see. Other things matter to her. Her health matters to her. Her friends and her family matter to her.

 

 

  
She takes the staff out for a long lunch because it’s Meera’s nameday. Twenty four is one of those inauspicious namedays — at least that’s what Meera says. Drogo is away at a shoot. She pops into Grey’s office when she catches him off the phone. She says, “You wanna join us?”

He says, “Nah. I’m gonna make it weird by going.” He means that he’s the boss, and they get all squirrely and nervous around him. Like, he prevents them from cracking jokes and complaining about the boss. “Have fun, though.”

“Okay,” she says.

 

 

  
It’s a good thing that Grey didn’t go because over lunch, the staff pretty much spends the entire time alternating between making fun of him and Drogo and venting about him and Drogo. They are having a _great_ time. Grey gets most of the focus, because Drogo is more relaxed and not so anal retentive.

“Was he always like that?” Pyp asks Missy. “Back when he was young, what was he like?”

“Okay, first off, he’s still young,” Missy points out. “He and I are the same age, guys.” The staff looks at her. They look at her like they are refraining from admitting that they find her kind of old, too. She rolls her eyes. Then she says, “And I’m not sure how to answer your question. When he was _younger,_ he was also really focused and insanely talented and had an unhealthy endurance for work. So that’s the same. But back then, he was less fun — if you can like believe that. He was more severe all the time. He never joked around that much at work. When I came on with you and saw him work with you guys, I was actually shocked at the kind of rapport you have with him. He’s so honest about how he feels with you guys. And he smiles so much with you guys.”

“Oh my God,” says Jojen. “We’re getting the chill version of him? We’re getting the _fun_ version of him?”

Missandei laughs. She says, “Yeah. You actually are.”

 

 

  
He catches them all funneling back into the office as he’s on his way out to do a site visit. He’s adjusting the way the strap of his camera bag sits on his shoulder as the door swings open and he gets hit with a lot of chatter and a lot of laughter. He says, “Whoa,” as he takes a step back to avoid being bowled over.

 

 

  
He doesn’t expect anyone to still be in the office when he gets back at 6:30, but Missandei is still there with a cup of juice at her desk. She’s furiously typing out an email on her computer when he gets back. When she sees him enter the office, she explains, “BTC is trying to move their launch date up a month. And I’m about to tell them that they have _got to be_ fucking with me.”

He gives her quick smile.

 

 

  
At 7:00, she done with her work and she gets up from her desk to walk over to his office. She forgets to take off her computer glasses, so everything is a little bit blurry as she makes her way there. She leans against the door jamb, and she says, “You got dinner plans? Wanna eat?” She’s asking because she wants to talk to him. She wants to talk to him because she been thinking about him _all the fucking time._ She’s been doing a lot of analyzing. There’s some stuff she’d like to get off her chest. She doesn’t want to blindside him, so she says, “I want to talk to you. I mean, I have a specific topic of conversation I want to talk about with you.”

To him, it sounds incredibly foreboding. So he _definitely_ wants to say no. But saying no would be kind of graceless and cowardly. He has no dinner plans. He’s finishing up. This is actually great timing. Fuck. He slowly says, “Okay. Sure.” He adds, “What’s this about?”

“You and me,” she says simply.

 

 

  
They go to the restaurant right downstairs. The food is not good. The ambience is broad and people-pleasing. And she doesn’t want to work that hard, and she doesn’t need to have a great bite to eat today.

They grab a booth in the corner, next to the window.

 

 

  
He says, “You don’t need to ease into it.” He’s actually afraid that she’s about to tell him that she is quitting. Because she cannot stand working with him like this anymore, and she has a much better offer elsewhere. He would not blame her. But it still makes him feel sick and tortured inside because she’s fucking been his fucking savior. It’s been nice having her be a part of his daily routine. He says, “Just say whatever you want to say to me.”

She laughs in reflex, dipping her face down to look at her lap, where her hands are clasped. His anxiety gives her heart pangs. Because she keeps looking at him, and she keeps knowing what she gave up and what she has lost.

She says, “I listened to all of your voicemails, like repeatedly, when I first got them. I still have them saved on my computer, but I don’t listen to them anymore because they still hurt.”

It takes him a beat to understand what she’s talking about, because he assumes they are here to talk about how she is quitting. He had not anticipated the possibility that they are here to just slug their way through their break-up _again._

She says, “I questioned myself all the time, you know. I wanted to get on a plane _all the fucking time._ I wanted to quit my job and just _be_ with you — _all_ the _time._ I’m telling you this because I don’t think you realize this. I think that you think it was far easier for me than it was for you.”

She says, “What stopped me from running to you and just saying fuck it to it all was knowing I was no good for you. You are right. I was no good for you. I distracted you, and I made us both stupid because I loved you _so much._ And you are like — so much better than you ever gave yourself credit for. And you were meant for so much _more._ Didn’t I say that you? Didn’t I used to always say that to you?”

“Stop,” he says. He won’t look at her.

She totally does not listen to him. She reaches up to wipe her eyes. She says, “It was never that I didn’t love you enough. It makes me so sad, if you feel that way or think that way. I loved you _too much._ I forced myself to let you go because I wanted to love you like how you deserve be loved. You needed to be apart from me to grow. I was keeping you down. You were going to quit your job for me. You needed to lose me in order to become the person you are today.”

 

 

  
He loudly and aggressively says, “Fuck!” before he downs the rest of his drink in one continuous gulp. And then he hacks out a cough before replacing the glass on the table. He sighs. He starts to look at her, and then he starts to say something. And then he shakes his head, and he closes his mouth. And then he picks up his glass again and tries to take a drink, but he realizes that it’s just full of ice. He says, “What do you _want_ from me?” He expects her to say that she wants them to get back together.

“I just want us both to be happy.”

“Oh, _okay,”_ he says sarcastically. Because he is real fucking happy right now.

“I love you,” she says. “You need to know that there’s another person that exists who loves you. That person is me. And I don’t mean that I love the past incarnation of you or that I love the memory of who we used to be together. I mean, I see you all the time, and we chat all the time at work. I love who you are. Right now.”

He doesn’t say anything for a long time. He feels really put on the spot and blindsided.

He feels like he made himself pretty clear — he generally makes himself very clear to all of the people in his life. At one point, he told Jaime to take him home — but instead, Jaime took him to Tyrion’s house. At one point, he told Drogo to stop harassing Pod and Drogo physically came at him for that. At one point, he has told Sansa that he does not want to be set up on dates. He has told Drogo’s sister to stop kissing him. He has told Tyrion that he doesn’t fucking want to do anything he doesn’t want to do. He has told her that he does not want to have a personal relationship with her. So he doesn’t know how she manages to make him feel so fucking terrible all the time with her kindness and the way she looks at him. He doesn’t know how she manages to make him feel so hopeful and optimistic all the time.

He says, “I can’t say what you want me to say. I’m sorry.”

She is expecting this. It hurts a little — or a lot still — because of course it does. But she didn’t say any of this to make a case for them being together again. She’s not crying as she says, “I know. I didn’t say that to — I’m not trying to make an appeal here. I just want you to know how I feel about you.”

“Okay, so now I do,” he says, staring down at the table.

“Cool,” she says. And then she clears her throat, picking up the menu. “So what are you gonna get? I’m still kind of full from lunch, so I might just get a salad. Or maybe a soup and salad. Oh, but there’s that deal where you can get half a sandwich plus salad or soup for the same price as an entree salad. Do you want to share an appetizer?”

He looks at her, stunned. He says, “Missandei. What the fuck?” And then he shakes his head. He says, “Obviously I want to share an appetizer. Yes.”

 

 

 


	29. Missy loves Grey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life goes back to mundane after a significant love declaration, as it sometimes does. Grey and Drogo have a fight. Missandei gives good advice.

 

 

 

 

Neither of them really know what they are supposed to do or where they are supposed to go after her declaration of love for him. In the immediate aftermath, they share these potato skins. Missandei dissects hers with a fork like it’s the very first time she’s ever had a potato skin — and it just might be — because she says they are not what she expected. She says they still have so much meat on them still — she means actual potato. She tells him she thought they’d be more potato chip-like, but with skins. She asks him if he knows where the innards of the potatoes even go — if they go into some other dish or something. She scrapes off some congealed cheese with her fork and says it’s basically like a baked potato — this is basically a fucking baked potato. She says it like she feels misled.

He knows she’s trying to make this less awkward and more normal for him. He watches her dip her BLT sandwich into her tomato soup. She mutters that she’s seen people do this before. But maybe just on TV. She crosses her legs at the ankles under the table. She asks him how he likes his lunch. He says, “Obviously it sucks.”

She smiles, and she lightly shrugs.

 

 

  
In the weeks that subsequently pass by, they fade back into their regular routine. She sees him at the office. She is friendly and nice to him. He tries to be nice and friendly back to her — sometimes it works and sometimes he is really tense and awkward. But then, that is pretty normal, too. He keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop — for some sort of blowout fight or some sort of emotional fallout.

This is what he expects because of the past. In the past when they dated, his hormones were going bezerk the whole time, and he was always in one of three modes around her. Or maybe it was just youth — maybe it was because he was younger. But he was either fucking her desperately because he couldn’t stand not being buried in her — or he was pushing his emotions and his feelings and his insecurities down, down, _down,_ letting them lie in wait before he couldn’t take it anymore and he picked an explosive fight with her. Or he was just missing her so badly that there was nothing else he could focus on.

He keeps waiting for that. He waits for his brain to break and for him to act out. He waits for her brain to break and for her act out. He looks at her smile with such suspicion sometimes.

 

 

  
No one wants to hear the latest update in her ongoing saga with Grey. All of her friends are over it. So she keeps it to herself. She just continues going about her routine and her rituals. She faithfully visits with her family during Sunday barbecue. Sarah’s been showing her face there. They’ve been eating outside because of the weather.

As Mars cleans the grill with a steel brush before he plops down the marinated meat and vegetables, Missy and Camille sit at the patio table and are listening to Sarah defend herself. She took her boyfriend back. He apologized for sticking his penis into the mouth of some other girl. He cried when he apologized and everything. He says it was a moment of pure weakness. He said he will never betray Sarah like that ever again. He said he was drunk. He said a lot of things. Sarah thinks he deserves a second chance. She’s been doing really healthy things like having him hand over his phone’s passcode to her so that she can do periodic checks to ensure he’s not texting other girls.

To Missandei, this is just a slow-motion crash. To Missy, this is just delaying the inevitable end and it’s going to prolong the inevitable pain. But then, if someone told her younger self to open her eyes and see that her high school boyfriend didn’t actually love her like how she wanted him to love her — or that the guy that she dated throughout college and into her mid-twenties was ill-matched for her — or that it wasn’t sustainable to live and breathe a person day and night, all day every day — well, all of those times she would’ve told the truth-teller to just go shove it up their rear. People will do what they want to do. Girls probably have to learn lessons the hard way — through experience.

Soft-spoken Camille is way more judgemental about it. With one really sweet and relatively innocent long-term relationship under her belt, she is kind of resting on her laurels. She likes to spout off cliches she’s heard or read somewhere. Like, “Once a cheater, always a cheater, Sarah.”

 

 

  
He tells Drogo about the position he is in with Missandei. Drogo starts to say a bunch of trite and unhelpful things about how life is complex and hard and how knowing where to go with relationships is a mystery sometimes, but Grey tells Drogo to please just shut up. He says he didn’t tell Drogo about his life to get an idiotic response on this stuff. He’s just telling Drogo as part of his due diligence. They are homies for life, and this is a life update. That’s all.

After a pause, in irritation because all of his good intentions and all of his love and his declarations of support are getting punched in the face by this asshole, Drogo says, “Well, I’m sorry you have to fucking open your mouth and talk to me sometimes. Must fucking suck.”

The anger and the bitterness manages to surprise Grey. He does not realize that sometimes the stuff he says is kind of hurtful. He forgets sometimes that Drogo lashes out when he gets his feelings hurt. So Grey sounds pretty insensitive when he says, “What’s your problem, man? Why are you being such a _bitch?”_

Drogo cannot say that he’s being a _bitch_ because his life feels stressful right now. His relationship with Dany feels stressful. Work feels stressful. There’s a shit ton of pressure to perform all the time. They work so hard to get these jobs by upselling themselves so much, and then after they kill themselves getting the job, they have to fucking _deliver_ on top of that. And Drogo knows this shit comes like second nature to Grey, but that is also another stressor for Drogo. His best friend is just so much fucking better at everything than he is. And that fucking _sucks._ Drogo says none of that. Instead, Drogo says, “Man, I barely get to see you as it is, and when I do see you, you are just such a fucking _bitch_ to me.”

Grey says, “Man, what are you talking about? You literally see me all the time. We work together. We hang out all the time. How much fucking _time_ do you need from me? You need to stop treating me like I’m your girlfriend.”

Okay. That really stings. That really hurts like a deep cut in a bunch of fun and unexpected ways. That was just the perfect thing to say to him. Drogo wants to punch Grey in the fucking face now. But he won’t. Instead he says, “Oh, so I see why relationships are hard for you. It’s because you act like such a fucking _bitch_ all the time. You act like _this.”_

“Man, I can’t deal with you like this right now. You need to calm down and stop saying hurtful shit because you mad, you _bitch.”_

Drogo says, “What is even this fight we are having! We never fucking fight!”

Grey frowns. He says, “I know.”

 

 

Gendry and Arya have a quickie courthouse wedding the next time he visits King’s Landing because Arya is apparently not one of those women that gives much of a shit about weddings — and they need to be married ASAP so that they can start proceedings for Gendry’s immigration.

Most of their friends don’t attend the ceremony — just Arya’s parents and some family members. Most of them do attend the reception — AKA a last-minute, sloppily planned party that costs less than a new computer.

It’s the second celebration of marriage Missy’s been to in a little over a year. This time, she’s able to drive herself to the venue — a private upstairs dining room at a waterfront restaurant that is outdated by three decades. This time her hair looks nice, the bangs having grown out some. This time, her cheekbones can’t cut ice. This time, when she sees him, she walks up to him all bold and intentional, and she says, “You look _really_ nice.”

Today, he gives her a wry smile and he says, “Thanks?” lilting the word up into a question. And then his eyes scans her body down and then up real quick — too quickly for her to have a proper bodily response to it — and he says, “Cool dress.”

She touches the lacy material with the flat of her hands over her stomach. She says, “Yeah? You think so? You don’t think it’s too thick? There are like, three layers to this thing.” They are heading into fall, but the summer temperatures are lingering.

“Missandei,” he says, keeping his eyes trained on her face. “I was being polite. Also, I didn’t literally mean _cool_ dress. It looks warm.”

“Yeah, man,” she says, kind of spinning around in place to get another look at her back because that’s the one area that gets air circulation. “I have some regrets. But it was on sale.”

She showed up to this wedding reception in a sensible and kind of conservative dress — not what he was expecting — which was a skin-tight, low-cut dress that she was gonna use to _fuck with his mind._ But no. Her dress is very classy.

 

 

  
He’s having a miserable time at this wedding because he has no friends. He’s actually being melodramatic because when he says he has no friends, he means that it’s been really strained and awkward between him and Drogo. They haven’t hung out together outside of work at all. He’s a little stupid, because he doesn’t completely understand what went wrong. He doesn’t understand why Drogo is so sensitive lately.

He mired in his own thoughts. He initially doesn’t even see her. And then he doesn’t recognize her when she walks up to him and says hello, asking him how it’s going. He assumes she’s just some friendly stranger. He leans further back in his seat, surveying the gathering — a mixture of their friends and also a crapton of Starks. Gendry has no family.

Grey says, “Fine. How are you?”

She says, “I’m doing good. It’s nuts that this whole wedding is happening so fast, huh?”

“Tell me about it,” he says. “They barely know each other. This is a disaster in the making.”

“Oh, that’s not what I meant,” she says. “I just meant it’s hard to plan a wedding so fast. I actually think they are a well-matched couple.”

“Oh, okay,” he says. And he thinks that he’s just nailing this conversation with a complete and total stranger. He offers out his hand to her. He says, “My name is Grey, by the way. How do you know Arya?”

She looks awkwardly stunned — she cuts eye contact with him and kind of recoils, talking a small step back. She looks off to the side as a curtain of her hair falls past her shoulder. She says, “Um, it’s me, Jeyne. We went on a date about this time last year?”

Recognition dawns on his face. He says, “Oh, shit. We did.” And then he clears his throat and tries to make this better. He says, “Sorry. I didn’t recognize you. You look a lot prettier now than you did then.”

Oh, shit.

 

 

  
Jeyne is a nice, non-violent person, so she does not take the same route that Drogo’s sister took. She does not raise her hand to hit him across the face. She actually came over because she felt awkward all night and she thought that it was the same for him. She thought he was avoiding her all night because of what went down. She wanted to go over and be cool, tell him that it’s not big deal that he never called or texted her even though he kind of strongly implied that he would. That kind of stuff happens all the time in dating, so she doesn’t hold that against him. She thought they had a nice time and had a few things in common — and perhaps Sansa had built him up way too much so she was kind of pre-smitten before they actually met. It was kind of a bummer when he didn’t reach out, but people don’t reach out all the time. She intended to smooth things over with him when she walked over.

But when she finds out that he does not even remember her, something breaks inside of her. She says to him, “What you just said was very rude, and I don’t know if you said it on purpose or on accident — I really hope it’s the latter. I think you should be a little bit more considerate with other people’s feelings in the future. Have a nice night, Grey.”

And then she walks off and leaves him in the dust.

 

 

  
Missy gets to be held in Yara’s arms as they slow dance together. She asks Yara to dip her — and Yara listens and follows directions and dips her — and Missy freaks out and goes rigid because she’s never been properly dipped before. It throws them off balance and nearly makes Yara eat floor — but instead they crack up.

With Obara, she goes through the buffet line — food that Arya’s mom and family made — these chicken skewers and tons of grilled veggies and lots of bread rolls — easy-to-cook food designed to feed a lot of people. Obara says, “Fuck my diet,” as she loads up her plate with rolls and butter.

She’s usually too intimidated by Drogo’s really obvious brand of sexual forwardness in movement — he grinds a lot when he dances — but tonight she feels brave. She reaches out and grabs his forearm, pulling him into the crowd. She laughs when she looks at the immense smile on his flushed face — it’s flushed from alcohol, from how much he’s been drinking — and then she shrieks and then starts lightly beating her fists against his chest when he digs his hand into the small of her back and yanks her hips against his. She’s like, “Ahhh, too much! Too much!” because she’s scared of them like, _locking up_ accidentally. She hears a low chuckle drift out of him. He palms her face fondly and holds her jaw in his hand. He creates a little bit more space between them. He shakes her a little bit, pretending to be exasperated with her.

Missy looks up at the yellow lights in the ceiling. She thinks to herself that she is having a nice time — a really, really nice time at this wedding reception. It makes Missandei think that this is really lovely. This is kind of the _life._

 

 

  
He steals a bottle of sparkling wine and he starts just guzzling it. It’s terrible because it’s way too fucking sweet and too bubbly and the alcohol content is too light. This is actually all of the shit that he hates in his drink, but he is miserable so he chugs it anyway.

“Hey, are you alright?”

He looks up. He’s sitting at a table, and she’s standing. She’s glistening because she’s been sweating — because the dress _is_ probably too thick and too warm. He says, “Yeah.”

She says, “As someone who has been a hot mess at a wedding before, I’d say that you are probably four gulps away from dance-fighting.” She pauses, smiling at the memory. Then she says, “Wanna come join us for a bit? Show us some moves?”

“No,” he says.

“Oh, okay.” There’s another pause before she says, “I heard you and Drogo are currently beefing. He told me. Hence my use of the word ‘beefing.’”

Grey shrugs. He says, “Yeah. And?”

“He’s your best friend. He’s miserable, too. I know it’s hard to tell because he’s so drunk and such fucking fire on the dancefloor, but he’s hurting, too.”

“Okay?” He sighs heavily, and then he shrugs again.

“So I can tell that you really don’t want to talk right now.” She rubs her lips together and takes a modest step back in her strappy heels. She says, “It’s cool. I’ll leave you alone then.”

He says, “Missandei, wait.”

 

 

  
She has her head pressed against her fist, her arm braced against the table as she watches him continue to torture himself by drinking straight from the bottle of sparkling wine. She offered to run off and find him like, a proper drink if he really wants to do this. But he told her that he doesn’t deserve more than fucking shitty wine with bubbles in it. It’s kind of as dramatic as he ever gets, and it makes her go whoa, as she strategically refrains from mentioning it. He is self-punishing. He is still good at beating himself up.

He tells her that he and Drogo had the stupidest fight — and he doesn’t even know what the fucking fight was _about._ Drogo was just being fucking annoying and Grey was like, hey, stop being annoying. And then Drogo just _overreacted_ the _fuck_ outta everything and got all pissy. Grey tells her that he got shamed real good by a woman that he went on one date with. Sansa set them up and forced him to have dinner with this woman — whose name he currently _cannot_ remember holy fuck, he is a fucking asshole. Oh God, he’s the worst kind of asshole. She told him her name again and everything, too. Fuck.

“Are you talking about Sansa’s best friend?” Missandei asks. “That’s Jeyne.”

“Yes!” he grunts out. “Jeyne! Fuck!” And then he adds, “I was awful to her. In the past and also just now.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t that bad,” she says dismissively.

 

 

  
He is borderline incoherent because he’s so upset and emotional — he’s not carrying the weight of his side of the conversation at all. So she starts rambling to fill up the space, in hopes that it will help. She tells him short little lessons she has accumulated. She tells him that in her own life, she finds that that sometimes pride gets in the way of friendships or relationships. Sometimes a lot of time passes before something honest and real and vulnerable gets said, and sometimes friends do not know how she feels about them and where they stand with her because how could they know? Sometimes friends think one way, but the truth is actually another way. And the disconnect happens because there is a lack of communication. She tells him that it took a little bit of time for her own issues with Drogo to smooth over, in the years she was gone and not communicating. She tells him she had to do a grand tour with everyone, to get them all back on the same page. She had to have a talk with Yara. She had to have a talk with Obara. She had to have several talks with _him._ And ultimately, honesty in communication is key. She tells him that also, people are generally stronger than she gives them credit for. Sometimes she thinks that she has done something egregious — and it’s kind of miraculous, the way that people forget or don’t think it’s as embarrassing or as bad as she does. She tells him that she generally just lets people handle their end of things and she doesn’t drive herself crazy trying to read minds.

She says, “Just try reaching out later and telling him you’re sorry for the fight. And maybe ask him to explain to you why he got so mad. I bet you that you’d get a good response from him. Drogo’s generally good with that sort of thing.”

 

 

  
He tells her that sometimes he feels empty inside. Sometimes he feels like he so afraid to feel the depth of his feelings that he just opts to feel nothing instead. He tells her that this is probably not a good way to live.

He’s hugging the empty bottle of wine in his lap as he stares at her face. He closes his hand in a fist and he lightly knocks it against her warm bare knee. He says, “So, you love me? That’s still a thing about you?”

She kind of throws her head back as she laughs, this throaty giggle. She thinks his effort at communicating things that are hard and complex is cute and really funny. She smiles at him fondly. She says, “Yeah, I love you.”

He takes his hand back, and he lays it flat against his chest. He says, “That gets to me. Right here.”

 _That_ gets to her — it makes her entire body tingle, and it makes her heart feel tight. It makes her eyes feel hot. She wants badly to reach out and grab his face so that she can kiss it. But she doesn’t do that. Instead, she whispers, “You really don’t want to be friends with me?”

He says, “Man, I second-think that all the time.”

“Okay,” she says quietly, grinning at him. “That’s good enough for me. Keep thinking about it, okay?”

“Okay,” he says. “I will.”

 

 

 

 


	30. Grey tries to get laid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So distraught over his fight with Drogo, Grey acts out.

 

 

  
Drogo feels torn and he feels regret as he watches Grey stumble away in the dark, heading toward the train station by himself. Drogo is letting his ego and his pride get in the way of Grey’s safety. But he tells himself that he tends to be a little overprotective and oppressive with the people he loves. Grey has told Drogo plenty of times that he’ll be okay taking the fucking train. Drogo places his hands on top of his head, and he mutters, “Why doesn’t he just buy a fucking _car_ already? Fucking _idiot.”_

He sways heavily on his feet — Yara has to grab onto him to help keep him steady. She pulls his arm over her shoulders and she presses her palm to his warm chest. She says, “I like how you spiral, D.” She means that she can recognize the tell-tale signs — she knows what emotional drinking looks like. And then to Missy, Yara says, “I’m going to take this one home. You get the other one?”

 

 

  
She’s running in her heels to catch up with him — trying to keep her chaotic steps controlled because she does not want to trip and break an ankle and fall. She’s never going to catch up to him, so she has to call out his name. She hears her voice echoing out. She can see the moment he hears her. He suddenly stops walking — freezing for a moment before he slowly turns around.

It gives her time to jog up to him, panting. She lightly coughs into her fist as her steps uneasily stutter to a stop right in front of him. She brushes strands of her hair off her face, and through heavy breaths, she says, “Hey — let me drive you home.”

 

 

  
His attitude is shitty and he’s drunk, so he tells her that he does not need a babysitter and that he can ride the fucking train by himself just fucking fine. She is like whoa, what is with the ‘tude? She’s been so nice to him all night!

She actually decides to say this out loud. She says, “What is with the ‘tude! I’ve been nice to you all night!”

 

 

  
They drive back to Drogo’s apartment in silence, because Yara does not really want to listen to him talk about his lover’s quarrel with Grey when he’s in this state — when he’s just a smelly mess of sweat and alcohol. Instead, she just turns the stereo up.

He starts to fall asleep on the drive. She reaches over and pushes his head so that his face is oriented at the window. She cracks it open just a little bit, so that the outside air blows on his face.

 

 

  
She doesn’t want to work that hard to convince him that he should probably just let her drive him home. She figures he’s probably not going to die on the train. So she tells that he can either get door-to-door service or he can brave public transport while drunk and do a little bit of walking if he wants.

He follows her back to her car.

 

 

  
Yara has to violently jostle him to get him to wake up enough to walk into his apartment building. She has to basically drag him all the way to the elevator and slap his face a few times to get him to remember the right code to get the elevator to work after hours. She has to repeat the hitting after she drags him to his front door. She thinks that she’s a fucking saint, he’s fucking heavy, and he owes her _massively._

His apartment is dark and quiet when they enter. She has to leave him on his couch — which is as far as she gets before he just collapses and falls down. She was actually aiming for the bedroom.

She goes into his kitchen to get him a glass of water and to dig underneath his sink for a barf bucket. She places those things on his coffee table, next to his snoring body. She unties his dress shoes and hates herself for caring about him as she yanks them off his feet. She dates women so she doesn’t have to deal with this shit — and also for the sex. She reaches down and loosens his tie before taking it completely off because she’s afraid he might accidentally choke himself to death because he’s so dumb sometimes.

She’s on her way out when his voice rumbles to life behind her. He says, “Yar? Are you leaving already? We just got here, though.”

 

 

  
She’s never been to his apartment before — she doesn’t even know where he lives, so Missandei lets the GPS on her phone take her to the address that he gives her. In her car, he reclines the seat a lot — it makes her think that he’s just going to sleep while she drives him home — but he actually crosses his arms over his chest and generally looks fairly awake as the city passes them by.

When her phone tells her that she’s at his building, she looks up and through her windshield at it. She says, “Whoa, this is tall,” as she pulls up to his front gate and puts her car into park. “Man, you’ve moved on up in the world.”

He says, “I’ve been here less than a year. I was actually still in my studio up until a year ago.”

She says, “Oh.” She remembers that studio well. She lived in that studio with him for a couple of months before she left for Ulthos. They had a lot of sex together in that studio.

He’s probably thinking about the same thing. Because he unbuckles his seatbelt, wordlessly leans forward, puts his palm on her cheek, and he smoothly lays his mouth over hers. He starts kissing her, pressing his lips against hers assertively, leaning forward and tipping his balance so that he has to brace a hand against her headrest.

She groans, kissing him back with an open mouth. She’s going for this right away — she’s going for the possibility of sex right away. The thing about what they know about each other and what she has said to him is that she’s been wanting this really badly. She’s been wanting him to look at her like he wants something from her. She’s been wanting him to touch her like he can’t stop himself from touching her.

 

 

  
Their friendship generally lacks depth. She’d never go to him with an emotional quandary. She’d never go to him when she is sad. He generally is just a guy that she cracks jokes with and eats good food with. He is generally a guy that feels familiar and therefore kind of dangerous. He reminds her a lot of the men in her family. He has a lot of the same qualities.

She says, “You’re a cliche,” as she digs her spoon back into the melting tub of fudgy chocolate ice cream that is sitting on the tile floor. They are hanging out in his kitchen. The lights are still off, save for the buttery yellow light from the fan above his stove.

He’s barefoot because of her. He is leaning against his stainless steel fridge. He says, “See, this is why you’re cool. Dany doesn’t eat ice cream.”

“Yeah, I’m way fucking cool,” Yara says. “But not really because I eat ice cream. Like, have higher standards for people, D.”

 

 

  
Oh yeah, this is _the shit._ This is the kind of deep thought that is flying through his mind as he opens his front door, shuts it behind them, and drags her to his couch before pushing her onto it. It’s the kind of thought he has as he sucks on her neck, running his hands all over her body, cupping her butt, squeezing it, pulling her legs around his hips, smearing himself against her, moaning into her skin, boldly dipping under the hem of her dress. He is like, oh shit, as his hands land on her bare ass. He thinks she’s not wearing underwear until his fingertips touch a scrap of fabric at her hip and he realizes she’s wearing a thong. This is something new. He observes to himself that this is sexy new underwear.

This is going pretty fast. He’s pulling down the zipper of her dress one second and then the next, he’s pulling her bra down and exposing her breasts. He hasn’t has sex in a _very, very_ long time. He squeezes her soft skin, before he bends down and licks a trail over her sternum, before he lightly bites down on her nipple, before he goes for broke and sneaks his hand into her underwear, before he quickly finds what he’s looking for, before he slides a finger inside of her.

She makes a loud noise — a guttural gasp as her fingers dig into his shoulder and the cushion of his couch. She cries out his name, and it sounds _so fucking good_ to him. They’ve always had really, really great sex together.

He’s trying to kiss her on the mouth again when she says, “Oh, _motherfucker.”_

And then she gently pushes him off of her. She gently extricates her body from his. She mutters, “Sorry,” as she starts straightening her clothes, as she pushes her boobs back into her bra and starts pulling the skirt of her dress back down.

 

 

  
She catches the look that he throws at her — with his lips swollen and his clothes all askew from her grubby hands — and she almost loses her resolve and she almost collapses herself back into him.

But she presses her palm to her pounding heart, and she says, “You’re drunk. And you’re sad. And I think I deserve better than this.” After a pause, she amends it to, “No, actually, I _know_ that I deserve better than this.” She deserves someone who is happy when he is with her. She deserves someone who is sober the first time they do this again. She deserves to be more than just a band-aid on a wound. She deserves more intention behind action.

He sighs. He doesn’t altogether understand what she means because he’s so drunk. He just feels shitty, and he feels ashamed. He feels like he keeps messing up with people, and he can’t stop himself from continually messing up. He feels like she is condemning him because he was bad — and he _is_ bad. In his drunk state, he thinks she’s saying that she deserves more than him. And he can’t disagree with that. He says, “Missandei.”

 

 

  
He tells Yara that everything went out of whack the second he got serious with Dany. Everything became hard and awkward and tense the moment he got with Dany. He tells her that he does and he doesn’t want things to work out with Dany. He thinks that if things ended, he would feel sad but he would also feel relief. He tells her that he feels held down — not necessarily by Dany, but by expectations. Also a little bit by Dany.

This is something Yara understands pretty fucking well — the labor of making a relationship work when it feels so unnatural sometimes. The labor of having to account for and answer to someone else all the time.

He asks her, “Do you feel external pressure? To settle down?”

She says, “Me? No. Not that much. My dad barely acknowledges that I sleep with women, so he’s not exactly clamoring for wedding bells and a white dress, you know what I mean?”

“Man, you’re so lucky,” Drogo mutters. His mom has been bugging him about Dany. His mom really wants to meet Dany. He has been trying to do everything in his power to delay this because he is one hundred percent sure that his mom will _hate_ Dany.

Yara gives him a smile. She says, “I’m not sure that’s how I’d describe that.”

“I mean you’re lucky that there aren’t expectations.”

She shrugs. “There are trade offs. There are other kinds of expectations.”

He feels like he’s being an insensitive idiot. Yara thinks so, too. He says, “Oh, of course. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that you’re lucky that your dad is an asshole.”

 

 

  
Grey wakes up in his bed the next day, alone and a bit hungover and dehydrated. The events of the previous night come flooding back to him pretty much right away — from the petulant way he ignored Drogo at the wedding to Missandei’s nice advice and pep-talk — to her squirming, tight body underneath his as he readied himself to give himself over to her. Then she got up and went home because she accurately sensed that he was kind of using her.

He covers his face with his hands. He is such a fucking piece of shit asshole.

 

 

  
He kills a few hours in the morning as he processes and tries to figure out what to do. He spends a few hours wondering if he has just royally fucked up his entire life. He pretty much spends a little bit of every week just looking at her in the office and marveling over how he got so fucking lucky. He spends every week worried that she is going to figure out that she could be some place that pays her better, that gives her more exposure. He pretty much expects for her to quit and leave him in ruins all the time. He thinks that he’s a self-sabotaging moron because _of course_ he tried to have sex with her, and _of course_ he couldn’t fucking keep it in his pants. He thinks that she is probably rightly furious at him because he is furious at himself. He is pissed at himself for being such a weak piece of shit.

He makes and then eats his breakfast without tasting it. He spends the whole time eating breakfast with his heart pounding in his throat, because he’s decided that he should talk to her and try to work this out. He should fucking apologize to her a lot. The prospect of her not accepting his apology scares the shit out of him, and he delays calling her for as long as he can.

But he finally makes himself do it. She picks up on the third ring. She sounds breathless. She says, “Hey, what’s up? How are you feeling?”

He blows past all of the polite pleasantries. He says, “I’m so sorry about last night. I was really fucking drunk, not that that’s an excuse because it’s not. But I was just so fucking hammered.”

She says, “Oh, I know.”

“We should talk,” he says raspily. “Do you wanna to meet up today?”

“Ah, I can’t,” she says. “I’m not trying to blow you off. It’s just that Sundays are family day for me. I spend my Sundays with my brother and his daughters, so I’m pretty tied up today and can’t meet up with you.”

“Oh.”

“Maybe Monday? Or later in the week? I think you are pretty booked up tomorrow. You have back-to-back meetings all day, and I think you’re also offsite in the middle of the day.”

“Okay,” he says, feeling discouraged. “Maybe later in the week.”

“Hey, listen, I gotta run,” she says. “I’m kind of in the middle of something. But I will see you tomorrow, okay? Bye, Grey. Have a good Sunday.”

“Bye, Missandei.”

 

 

  
He can’t find the time with Missandei to tell her that he’s the very fucking worst, but he still wants to pay penance. So this is how he ends up going over to Drogo’s apartment, with two bundles of steak wraps even though he ate not that long ago. It’s his peace offering. He texts Drogo and asks to be let in when he’s at the door.

Drogo hasn’t been awake for very long, having stayed up talking with Yara before she finally pulled herself away from his emotional grasp and left him to stew in his own shit at four in the morning. He’s shirtless and messy-looking as he opens the door, as he leaves it open for Grey to enter.

Drogo has a headache and is nauseated from the drinking. He doesn’t really want to eat the steak wrap, but he understands that this is a gesture and it’s _their_ steak wrap. So he pulls a foil package across his kitchen counter and starts unwrapping it. He takes a small test bite, to see how his stomach will handle it.

 

 

  
“I’m sorry that I wasn’t listening to you when you were trying to give me advice and support. I’m sorry if I made you feel like I don’t appreciate you.” Grey’s been thinking _really hard_ about this. So that is why he is saying these things.

“Man,” Drogo mumbles. “I felt really dismissed by you and cast aside. I felt like my thoughts didn’t matter to you. And it really stung when I said that I missed you and you said that we hang out too much and I’m clingy. That made me feel insecure, and it hurt my feelings so I lashed out and started name calling.”

“Man, I didn’t mean to make you feel like your opinions aren’t important to me because they are. I was being a real jerk when I said that you aren’t my girlfriend. I said it to be a real fucking asshole. It’s just — this Missandei thing has been driving me _nuts_ — but I know that’s not an excuse to talk to you like that. I _do_ miss you. I miss hanging out outside of work, too.”

“Man, honestly, I really just needed to hear that. Thank you. I think I just needed to hear that you miss me, too.”

 

 

  
They hang out on the couch together after finishing their wraps, watching TV aimlessly, nursing glasses of water. Drogo tells Grey that he is just fucking drowning in his relationship with Dany. He just feels so fucking trapped and so stuck in it. He tells Grey that he knows that a lot of this is just his issues with his dad cropping up in a really annoyingly oblique way. He’s historically had a terrible track record with women, starting from the moment he hit puberty until now. He has a tendency to just use women and just fucking leave them when he got bored of them. He tells Grey he really doesn’t want to do this to Dany because she deserves so much better than that — but he sometimes wants to jump out of the fucking window when he’s with her. He wants to jump out of the window and just run the fuck away.

At the wedding yesterday, when he watched the way Gendry adoringly looked at Arya — Drogo wanted to barf. When he thinks about Tyrion being held down by a little rugrat now, he wants to barf. He doesn’t want to be trapped like that. He doesn’t want to be tied down and tamed and ruined like that. He sometimes thinks that at least some of this has nothing to do with his mom and dad. At least some of this can’t be because of trauma. Can’t he just be _this_ person in a pure and simple way? He is a simple man. He just wants to make cool shit, fuck a beautiful woman, and then eat good food. Why can’t his fucking life be this simple? Why does he always feel like the fucking world is trying to domesticate him? Why is it so wrong to be the way he is, to feel the way he does? He thinks about having more mundane dinners with one person and only one person for the rest of his life. And he wants to die. Maybe he needs to break up with Dany.

Drogo says, “Fuck it, man. I know we hang out more than sixty hours a week together already, but those are not quality hours. I want to see you more. I am going to start just making time for shit I want to do, and she just needs to fucking _deal with it.”_

 

 

  
The next time Grey sees her is on Monday at work. She arrives at eight. She is dressed down a little bit in jeans and a t-shirt. She still looks fucking amazing and beautiful to him. She spends a little bit of time getting herself a cup of coffee before he hears the clicking of her shoes as she makes her way to her desk and wakes up her computer.

She’s fresh-faced and smiling at him with a coffee cup hovering in the air. She’s about to take a sip. She says, “Hey! How was the rest of your weekend?”

It was mundane and shitty because he felt guilty the entire time. He says, “Fine.”

“Do anything fun?”

“I hung out with Drogo.”

“Oh! Nice! So you guys worked things out.”

“Yeah,” he says. “We did.”

“Awesome,” she says. “I’m glad.”

And then there is an awkward pause — just awkward on his end. She seems okay with it. He clears his throat and breaks it up with, “How was your Sunday?”

“Oh! It was great! My brother had an anniversary party for his shop — four years! So his employees and their families came over to Mars’ house to hang out and chill. We set up a volleyball net in the backyard and there’s this guy, Kovarro, who’s a million feet tall and he was so _good._ And we got a _huge cake,_ worried it wouldn’t be enough, but like, no one ate it! I have so much cake in my fridge right now. People are so scared of carbs and sugar these days!”

“Oh, good,” he says quietly. “I’m glad you had a nice day.”

“Yeah!”

And then he says, “Oh shit, is that a hickey?” He means on her neck. There’s a dark patch of skin on her neck.

She immediately touches her neck. She says, “Oh man, you can see it? I tried to cover it up with makeup, but I don’t have the clown paint needed for this. Also, clown paint only comes in white or dark brown like the color of shoe polish. It is fucking racist as shit.”

 

 

 

 


	31. Missy has a hickey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Grey and Jaime take one step forward, Drogo takes one step back. The ladies are still straight up cold chilling.

 

 

 

The staff totally notices the hickey on her neck, just like how it felt like everyone at her brother’s party noticed the hickey on her neck. The folks at her brother’s party were politely disinterested though, more wrapped in the kids running around and chatting with one another to really bother her about the hickey on her neck or her naked pictures — in spite of Mars’ worst fears. Her nieces gave her a lot of flack for it though, and the worst busybody of the day was actually Mars, who asked if there’s some guy out there that he should go threatened bodily harm to if he ever hurts Mars’ baby sis. Missy was like, not even touched or impressed. And obviously the guy is Grey. Obviously Grey gave her the hickey. Like, they both know this. What is up with this farce that Mars is gonna go around beating up some other guy who isn’t Grey? Mars probably wanted to convey he could beat up other guys — any guy that he felt like beating up, not just Grey, who doesn’t have a height or weight advantage.

In the office, Meera is the first to notice the hickey. She notices and then she tells everyone. Missandei jokes about it with them and says she got hit in the neck with a doorknob. Jojen actually believes her and with wide eyes, asks her how it happened. And then Osha slaps him upside the head and tells him to stop embarrassing himself.

Meera is like squealing and saying, “Oh my _Goddd!_ Who are you seeing? What’s his name? What’s his job? Is he cute? I want to know _everythinggg!”_

Missy wants to tell them that it’s no one’s business and to shut up about it already. But instead she says, “I’m seeing your mom. Her name is your mom’s name. She’s real cute. She’s a really gentle and caring lover.”

Meera is like, “Oh my God, what!” Not that she believes Missandei at all, but more that she _cannot_ believe Missandei just said that to deflect.

Drogo snorts out a laugh from the other side of the room, with his arms crossed over his chest.

 

 

  
Drogo also knows — right away — who gave Missandei the hickey on her neck. Grey doesn’t have to tell him — and Grey didn’t. It’s just like, really obvious to Drogo that Grey gave Missy the hickey because Grey is being quiet as _fuck_ and is also exhibiting complete and utter lack of jealousy, which would be weird as fuck — if Grey weren’t the one that messed around with her. Those two and their shenanigans.

When Drogo walks by Grey as Grey is talking with Pyp, Drogo reaches out and quickly sneaks his hand underneath Grey’s t-shirt. He starts tickling, and Grey lets out a shout of surprise before he gets irritated and annoyed. Grey snaps, “Will you fucking _stop!”_ as he tries to yank his body out of Drogo’s grasp.

Drogo holds on. He says, “Just melt into it.”

 

 

  
Drogo tells Dany that he can’t see her because he’s having dinner with Grey. It distinctly feels like he’s asking permission to do this — perhaps because of the way he phrases it, like a question — perhaps because he goes through the entire act of calling her to explicitly communicate this. Something about his own boundary-setting still feels deeply unsatisfying.

On her end, Dany does not even know the fuck why Drogo called her while she is working to tell her that he’s going on a date with his boyfriend. She does not even know why this guy fucking needs to _constantly_ tell her about every fucking detail of his life. She thinks that his saving grace is that he is hot and he is sweet — otherwise she would not even put up with this annoying ass shit. It’s because he’s sweet that she’s been stopping herself from snapping at him and saying terrible things to him — like how she sometimes thinks he’s a fucking sack of insecurity that she has to fucking drag around by the fucking neck. It’s because he’s ultimately a good guy — that she forces herself to talk through her teeth. She says, “Oh, sounds good. I hope you guys have fun. Thanks for letting me know.”

The fact that she told him thanks for asking permission makes Drogo’s jaw ache, because he’s clenching it so fucking hard.

 

 

  
Through a bit of terrible serendipity, Jaime calls up Grey and asks him if he has dinner plans. Grey reluctantly says that he has plans with Drogo. He sounds reluctant to admit this because Jaime has a tendency to get randomly butthurt whenever Drogo’s name comes up — _still._ Jaime is admittedly a lot better than he used to be about it, but sometimes he still manages to make Grey feel awkward with his passive-aggressive comments about how Drogo is so amazing and so cool and so funny and such a great dancer. And like, all of those things are true, so sometimes Grey doesn’t know what to say back to Jaime. Is he supposed to refute these things? Is he supposed to laugh? Where is the joke?

Today though, when Jaime learns that Grey already has plans with Drogo, Jaime cheerily asks if they’d mind if he came along, too. He hasn’t seen either of them in a while, and it’d be good to see both of them.

Grey says, “Uh, okay.”

 

 

  
Drogo never really has a problem with Jaime the way Jaime has a problem with him. Drogo’s biggest complaint about Jaime is probably that Jaime is really white, a fact that Grey cannot dispute. So when Grey tells Drogo that he was kind of backed into a corner and as a result, he told Jaime that he could come to dinner with them, Drogo says, “Oh, okay.”

 

 

  
Grey can’t really talk about how he managed to get to third base with Missandei before she threw him off her body and was like, ew. He doesn’t get the opportunity to talk about how shitastic he feels about how he just tried to use her body as a vessel to vent his frustrations into, which was a thing he used to do when he was younger, so he’s glad he’s at least consistent and hasn’t fucking changed for the better one bit. Grey doesn’t get a chance to be melodramatic and fatalistic about this because Jaime commandeers the conversation at dinner and Grey is too awkward and too reticent to be like, hey, I want to talk about my stuff, too.

Jaime is positively giddy. He tells them about all of the gains he has made in his life. He tells them that the financials for last quarter at his company were still at a loss, but if they retain the current business that they have, then they can be profitable again in about a year. He tells them that he went out and celebrated this momentous occasion with Brienne — and at the end of the night he kissed her. And she didn’t slap him in the face! She actually asked him what he was doing. And he told her that he thinks she’s really awesome and he wanted to see what kissing her felt like. And she took it. And then they went home separately and haven’t talked since! It is great!

“This is huge for me!” Jaime announces.

“It really is,” Drogo says, kind of smiling at Jaime’s enthusiasm. “You’ve messed with another man’s woman, so congrats. You’ve joined a not-so-exclusive club.”

That kind of kills a fair bit of Jaime’s victorious enthusiasm. It’s like cold water was thrown in his face, which was actually not Drogo’s intention. Drogo really meant it as a really benign comment, like, oh, we’re assholes and women are possessions, ha-ha! But Jaime reads it as more sinister and more judgemental. He frowns. And he flatly says, “They’re not married.”

“Yeah, I know, man,” Drogo drawls, before shoveling some hot noodles into his mouth.

See, this is why Jaime sometimes _hates_ hanging out with Drogo.

 

 

  
Drogo feels like he spends most of his night dealing with Jaime’s utter and complete uppity whiteness — and it’s cool. Except he didn’t get to really chat and chill with Grey casually as much as he wanted to, so dinner felt a bit dissatisfying. Some of Jaime’s nervous anxiety bleeds into Drogo some. It makes him a little tense, and this is the state his mind is in when he arrives at Dany’s place late to probably have some sex with her before he passes out in her bed next to her.

She’s already sleeping when he crawls on top of her and pulls the blankets off her body. He says, “Babe, wake up,” as he runs his hand under her shirt to cop a feel. “I want to fuck.”

She _does_ wake up, and — because she’s caught off-guard and semi-unconscious and doesn’t have the wherewithal to apply immense effort toward being nice and polite to him — she kind of snarls and rips his hand from her breast. She takes both of her hands and she slams them into his chest, knocking him back with surprising strength. She shouts, “Not in the fucking mood! Can’t you see I was in the middle of fucking _sleeping_ because I have to fucking wake up in —” She looks at the clock. “Fucking _three_ hours. Great. Awesome. Real fucking _nice,_ Drogo.”

Something about her extreme anger and the way she’s talking to him — like he’s a child — moves something inside of him. It’s probably the most honest she’s been with him in the entire time they’ve been dating for real. He thinks — _again_ — that he’s so bad at relationships and that he’s not fucking _meant_ for this. He says, “Dany, this needs to stop.”

 

 

  
She cannot even deal with him and his mess of emotions because she really has to get up in a few hours. She’s also kind of over this, too. A chunk of this reminds her of Daario, even though she constantly tries not to compare. She does not like how sensitive Drogo is. She does not like how volatile Drogo is. She does not like how much effort Drogo requires. She does not like that she feels so responsible for his happiness. She also especially does not like being woken up in the middle of the night because he is horny and emotional. She says, “You are really insecure.” She says, “You’re more insecure than I was expecting.” She means that, in spite of his posturing and proclamations that he gives no fucks, he actually gives so many fucks about what people think of him and he gets pretty defensive at the slightest provocation. She’s been walking on eggshells around him in order to not bruise his ego. She says, “I’m kind of tired of it.”

Because he’s bad at relationships, he does not hear these words and think that this is something he can work on. He hears these words and he just thinks that this is it. This is the end. He says, “Are we breaking up?”

She says, “Is that what you want?”

 

 

  
Grey and Missandei don’t get a chance to sync up until Thursday. A bunch of things get in the way of scheduling. He has a few late nights at work, and she has a few get-togethers on the books with her friends. The mark on her neck where he accidentally branded her fades with each day, kind of erasing the tangible nature of what happened between them. It’s pretty much gone by the time the end of Thursday rolls around and he’s holding open the door to the office for her walk through so he can lock up.

 

 

  
He doesn’t want to rehash their entire relationship and their entire break-up again. He’s so fucking tired of that shit — of going over it again and again. So he tries to avoid talking about that. Instead, he goes over the apology that he has diligently planned and edited over the week. He tells her that he’s really, really sorry for being a sloppy drunk. He’s really sorry for pawing at her sloppily like she wasn’t even a person. He’s really sorry for how offensive he was. He refrains from telling her that he’s such a fucking male and it’s so fucking disgusting sometimes.

She generally cringes inside as she watches and listens to his apology. Because he is generally way too hard on himself. She interrupts him when he starts rambling on about all the ways he’s a real piece of shit asshole. She says, “It was really hot, though.”

The skin on his face shoots up a million degrees as her words register. And he’s like, “What?”

She says, “I would _love_ to have sex with you again. On the condition that you are sober and are thinking of me and only me — not Drogo.”

His jaw drops. He says, “What!”

She says, “I haven’t had sex in a couple of years, man. It’s been _a minute._ And I love you, so it like, makes sense to me. We _could_ have sex together.”

 

 

  
He has so many questions and so many thoughts — but he’s kind of feels shy around her now, so he doesn’t know how to hammer out all of the rules and all of the details and all of the logistics. Like, hypothetically, where would they have sex? Hypothetically, what kind of sex can they have? Like, how often can they have sex and how many times before this deal expires? Is this just a one-time deal? What can he call her during sex? Can he say her name? What about oral sex? Is that on the table? Are they allowed to look at each other? What if he catches feelings and just starts wanting to suck the air from her lungs until she like, dies? What if she catches feelings and then starts crying and wailing in the middle of sex because she realizes that he is a big, ugly user and is just using her body because he’s a royal piece of shit? But he hasn’t had sex in years, too, and he would _really_ like to have sex with her again. Jesus fucking Christ.

Their server returns to their table. He asks, “Can I get you guys something to drink?”

Missandei actually laughs out loud, this honking snort that manages to slightly confuse and amuse their server. Her mouth is curled up into a smile as she watches Grey nervously fiddling with the drink menu. She says, “Do you want something to drink?”

He groans. This decision is coming up so _fucking fast._ He doesn’t even have any fucking time to make a pros and cons list. He doesn’t even have time to think about this in the way that it needs to be thought over. He is hyper aware that time is ticking by and this is getting weirder and weirder by the second.

Their server says, “I can come back.”

And Grey says, “No, I’m good with just water.”

Missandei’s face opens up into a wide and comical shit-eating smile as she not-so-silently laughs at him.

 

 

  
After their server leaves after taking their dinner order, he says, “Man, it’s a Thursday night. Like, I have to _work_ tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” she says. “I know. I have to work tomorrow, too. We like, work together. In the same office.”

He continues talking like he didn’t hear her. He says, “Like, I usually don’t drink on Thursdays anyway, you know? Like, I like water. I drink water all the time.”

“Yeah, man. I know. You like to stay hydrated.”

“Especially after that whole bout of diarrhea that almost killed me, man.”

“Yeah,” she says. “Especially after that.” After a pause, she says, “I like how you keep it so sexy because you’re so nervous. It’s honestly really fucking adorable.”

He groans again, wanting to slap his forehead into the table.

 

 

  
She picks up the bill after fighting with him over it. He has a tendency to always want to pay because he knows how much money she makes and he makes a lot more money than she does. So that is why. But he is ridiculous, and she bullies him into letting her pay by cracking a dirty, underhanded joke about how he can’t pay for sex with food. He looks really scandalized, and he drops the bill like it burns him.

She’s honestly just fucking messing with his head because he is hilarious and really fucking cute, and he’s been so anxious ever since the weekend. It’s really cute and kind of endearingly patronizing that he thinks he has scarred her or traumatized her because they messed around together on his couch. She honestly does not expect them to go somewhere and bang one out.

But then after dinner, standing outside of the restaurant, he’s looking far off into the distance to help keep his panic at bay. And he says, “What do you have going on the rest of the night? Do you have something going on?”

She says, “No, I’m just gonna go home and chill.”

He says, “You wanna come over?”

She says, “Holy shit.” She stares at him in awe and appreciation. She is _impressed._ She says, “Yes, I do.”

 

 

 

 


	32. Grey gets laid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I feel like this is another one of those chapters in which the title says it all: Grey gets laid.

 

 

  
They’ve been having a lot of conversations. Dany generally does not get a lot of sleep. She generally has to go to work looking tired with her fucking face all puffy. She just sits there in angry disbelief as Drogo refuses to put a pin in this and just let her sleep for the night. He has been holding in a lot of his feelings, so at this point, he just wants to hash it all out constantly. He is _freaking out_ on her.

He is just throwing a ton of accusations at her. He is telling her that she is suffocating him. He is telling her that he can’t be who he really is around her because she prevents him from being who he is.

He is just hemorrhaging out his insecurities and his emotions, which is exactly what she hates and is disgusted by. She does not think she is doing any of the things he is accusing her of. She is annoyed that he didn’t bring this to her attention in a timely manner, and he just waited until it built up, festered, and is exploding out unproductively like this. This is the sort of bothersome shit that she tries to train out of her staff. She finds it exhausting to constantly communicate to her staff about how she doesn’t mind bad news but she really _hates_ surprises and she really hates being blindsided. So they need to come to her — right _away_ — when something needs her attention. She is fucking tired of working long days, spending that time communicating at length with dozens and dozens of people. She cannot fucking believe she has to fucking go home and do the very exact same thing with him. She just wishes he’d get a handle on his shit and would come at her with evenness and calmness.

He is shouting at her, saying, “I _told you_ that I am bad at relationships, and here is the fucking _proof!”_

After he takes a break from yelling at her, she tiredly says, “So how do you expect me to respond to all of this?” She doesn’t even care that much about his answer because she knows his answer is going to be a lie and it’s going to be stupid. She just wants him to feel ashamed. She figures that he probably wants her to admit fault, wants her to apologize and grovel, wants her to tell him that she didn’t mean to keep him down or make him feel bad because he’s not the center of her entire fucking universe. She can imagine the sort of predictable things he is wanting from her. A declaration of devotion, perhaps.

He actually says, “Do you even feel anything? Like, inside your heart? Like, who am I even, to you?”

 

 

  
Missandei’s logic is this: She is already in love with him. What is going to happen if she has sex with him? She’s going to fall in love with him harder? Big deal. And he has already maimed her and just hurt the shit out of her — so what is going to happen if they have sex and it all goes badly? She’s going to hurt again — but she already survived the first bout. It only taught her that she has the capacity to survive how he makes her feel.

They both drive separately to his apartment. He has to go into the lobby and wait for her there after parking in his garage — to let her in. She parked on the street and had to circle the block a few times before finding a spot. He generally keeps mentally scream-asking himself what the fuck he is doing because this is _insane,_ and this is going to blow up in his face _big time._ He is going nuts in the brain as she walks up to him, smiling, as his nervous hands unlock doors for her.

He realizes that she didn’t get a tour of his place the last time she was here, because they were making out and he was groping her underneath her dress on the couch. He anxiously starts turning on _a lot_ of lights so that she can like, see his furniture and his stuff. He almost turns on his stove light and his oven light. Instead he asks her if she’d like anything to drink. And he nervously says, “Water. I meant water,” because that’s actually all he has. He doesn’t entertain people often — or ever. And then he freaks out again, because he has forgotten that water is now their new code word for sex. So he corrects himself smoothly by saying, “I meant _real water!_ Like spring water — except I don’t have bottled water. My water is filtered though.”

“No, thanks,” Missy says. “I’m alright on the water.”

He stares at her probably in a normal way until she turns her back to him, continuing to walk around. Then he flips his face to his ceiling and mentally screams, what the fuck. Does water mean sex or does water just mean fucking water in this instance? It is _completely ambiguous._

She wanders around his apartment looking at everything. She looks at the pile of his camera equipment on a big table — not haphazardly plopped down but also not displayed like a museum exhibit either. It looks like a workspace, where things move around a lot and get shifted. She walks over to his bookcase and starts reading the titles — he’s still really into biographies. He’s still a big ol’ nerd. She walks over to his sofa and she runs her hand over the back of it, not really trying to reminisce about the last time she was here — but that’s how it looks. She’s actually just touching the leather for the sake of feeling it.

Grey is about to just back the fuck out of whatever he has started up — he’s about to ask her if she wants to watch a little TV or maybe play a game. Like, he has a deck of cards somewhere around here.

But she says, “What does your bedroom look like?”

 

 

  
She laughs as she smooths her hands up his chest, over his t-shirt, over his shoulders, clasping her fingers together lightly behind his neck. They actually haven’t even hugged yet. It’s been many, many years since she’s been able to touch him or hold him like this. She swallows the lump in her throat as she softly presses some of her body to his. She smiles at his face — at the pure _terror_ on his face — as she says, “You know, when I requested that you stay sober for this, I didn’t really realize that I was actually asking for this really tense and freaked out version of you.”

“I’m sorry!” he says, kind of looking grief-stricken. “I’m so fucking annoying!”

“No,” she says, correcting him. “You’re actually so fucking cute. Can I help you relax?”

 

 

  
She helps him relax by running her hands over his body, over his clothes, generally avoiding anything below the waist. She rubs his back as she softly plants kisses on his chin. She whispers to him, and she tells him that he smells really good. He is a nervous dork, so he tells her that he probably has not showered in an entire day. She laughs and moves up to press her lips into his cheek. She lightly hugs his body as she makes him sway a little bit with her on their feet. She asks him, “Why are you so nervous? Do you not want to do this? We don’t have to do this. I know it got a little carried away and you probably thought I wouldn’t call your bluff — so if you want to just chill, that’s totally fine.”

He grabs her by her chin right then. He angles her face so that it’s in the perfect position. He says, “Man, I _definitely_ want to do this.” And then he kisses her intentionally, with the tip of his tongue licking over the seam of her lips. It surprises her — she freezes for a moment — and then he feels her smile against his mouth. When she smiles, her mouth parts. He takes the opportunity to deepen the kiss, to run his tongue against her tongue. His hands run down her back. His fingers curl themselves around the belt loops on her jeans. He kind of drags her body closer to his.

She’s breathing a little heavy when their mouths break apart. Her heart is pounding. She has his shirt wrapped tightly around her fist. She kind of fucking loves him a lot. She’s kind of having a hard time with her balance. She wants to bring up the past — she kind of wants to counterintuitively ruin this — she kind of wants to tell him that he still kisses all hot and sexy like a dirty motherfucker — but she refrains from saying that because she doesn’t want to remind him of the past. Instead, she says, “How do you want this to go?” When she realizes the question is too broad, she says, “Do you want this to go fast and hard? Do you want it to go slow and last a little longer?”

“It’s not going to last very long,” he says darkly. “Please manage your expectations accordingly.”

“Oh, I know,” she says, her smile getting impossibly wide. “That’s why I said a _little_ longer.”

She’s about to ask him, again, how he wants to have sex with her. But a lot of coherency shoots out of her mind as his hands move to the button on her jeans and he starts unzipping her pants. She says, “Oh,” as he pulls her pants down and tells her to step out of them.

 

 

  
Again, she wants to reference the past but she has to shove her fist into her mouth so that she can’t fucking talk and ruin this. Her shirt and bra are still on and all of his clothes are still on as she crawls backwards onto his bed, and he follows her there. She sees where he is looking and she feels her bare butt dragging against his smooth bedding and she says, “Oh, okay. So we’re doing this. Oh, okay.” Now, _she_ is the one who is nervous. She also hasn’t showered in the last day. Fuck.

She has these memories of pushing his head out from in between her legs. These memories are kind of at the forefront of her mind as he grabs her hips and moves her around a little bit, so she’s in a better position. He’s like, kind of assertive now. She kind of wants to warn him that she’s still not amazing at this. She’s like, had a lot of sex with herself in the time that they’ve been apart, so some things have changed. But some things have also stayed the same. He like, has his work cut out for him. Does he really want to do this?

She doesn’t let herself say any of those self-effacing things.

She just gasps, and she says, “Oh my God,” and then, “Shit,” as his wet tongue touches down on her clit. She says, “Oh my God, this is really happening to me.”

That makes him laugh. Because she sounds so hilariously awe-struck. He says, “I like to think that this is happening to _us._ But sure. It’s also happening to you.”

She feels the hot air of his breath on her sensitive skin as he lightly knocks his head against her inner thigh and continues to laugh at her. She looks down at the image of his happy face hovering right next to vagina, and it is _crazy._ And she starts giggling, too. She says, “Oh my God, you’re going down on me! This is crazy!”

Through his laughter, he says, “What the fuck! We’re having sex!”

She says, “I totally didn’t think this was gonna be happening to me, when I got up this morning!”

“I didn’t think this would be happening to you, either, when I got up this morning.”

 

 

  
After they both manage to get the laugh attack under control — after he visually examines the situation and decides that it would help things out a little bit if he shoves a pillow underneath her hips — after she stops herself from blurting out that she’s sorry — she’s sorry for the state of things down there because she didn’t expect that she’d get sex from him, and she’s sorry that she still takes so fucking long to orgasm — as he goes back down on her and then her face just bleeds out heat from disbelief at how weird this is _not_ — from how bold he is — and also from how fucking _good_ it is — as she reaches down and helps him out by gently stroking the back of his head and helping to guide him around — she tells him to give her a little more — a little more pressure. She tells him when he hits a really, really good spot. She tells him to stick a finger inside of her because she really, really liked it when he did that the other night.

When he does it, she says, “Yep,” and then, _“Fuuck,_ that is great,” and then, “Oh my God, this conversation is so one-sided.” And then she groans and arches up as he figures out some shit down there. She says, “Yeah, okay, this is _definitely_ happening.” She doesn’t mean sex — she’s totally past the awe of having sex with him again. She means an orgasm. That is definitely happening.

She eventually comes vocally and kind of emotionally — tears leak out of her eyes as she convulses and grinds it all out. She says, “Oh my God,” a lot and thoughtlessly, she says, “I love you so much.”

 

 

  
She drags him up so that she can kiss his face and his awesome mouth as she shoves her hand down his pants. He says, “Oh, _shit,”_ as his mouth goes slack and the kissing becomes one-hundred-percent her effort.

She says, “You smell so yummy.”

He raises himself up a little bit, trying to take off his pants with one hand. He says, “Uh, I smell like you do.”

She amends herself and says, “I smell so yummy. You’re so smooth and soft.”

He’s not entirely sure which bit of him she is referring to when she says that. Because his hard dick in her hand actually feels like it's fucking on _fire._ He carelessly says, “You’re chatty. I forgot that,” accidentally referring to the past. He says, “I’m having a really fucking hard time with the talking. I’m sorry.”

“Grey,” she says. “Where do you keep the condoms?”

 

 

  
So he doesn’t have any condoms — on account of being super celibate and majorly bad with women. He also didn’t plan on this at all, so he’s pretty unprepared. Missandei pretty much understands that he does not have any protection when his body goes rigid and he starts looking freaked out again. She wonders what the fuck he thinks she is going to do to him — like, does he think she’s going to smack him in the face for this super understandable situation?

He says, “Yeah, I’m sorry.”

She says, “Do you wanna run to the store?”

“Do I wanna get dressed, find a convenience store that’s open 24/7, and have a super awkward interaction with a cashier?” he says. “Fuck yeah, I do.” He sighs. He’s joking. He doesn’t want to do that at all. He says, “Hey, I can just go down on you some more? If like, you’re into that? I feel like I’ve gotten better at it. Like, I might be good at it now.” Again — he is carelessly referencing the past.

He just makes her breathless and tight inside. He is just so easy to love. She makes a face at him like she thinks he’s a really fluffy and adorable little teddy bear — she lets out a little whimper of adoration. It makes him feel really manly. He kind of laughs self-consciously, looking at his alarm clock. Maybe they’re just done. Maybe they can still watch TV or play cards for a little bit.

She starts shimmying her naked body down, going underneath the covers. His eyes go wide. He says, “No! No no no no no!” It’s just an automatic and instinctive response. He doesn’t even know what he is saying.

She says, “No?” in question.

He says, “Goddammit!” because he’s so bad at this! He says, “Sorry.”

Her voice is dry and yet also patient, as she says, “Is it a no. Or a yes?”

He says, “Fuck. It’s a yes.”

 

 

  
She has to go home because she has nothing to wear for work tomorrow. It’s two in the morning, and she has to go home because he’s probably not ready for her to sleep over. She slowly kisses him at his front door — these wet kisses that makes her body throb and tingle pleasantly. She says, “I had so much fun with you tonight. I don’t mean just because of the sex. But yes, because of the sex.”

He softly palms her cheek. He kisses her on the mouth again. He can easily get so wrapped up in her again. He says, “You are great. You are so fucking _great.”_

“Thanks,” she says. “You’re really amazing, too. Like, you’re the best, Grey.”

“Like, the best you’ve ever had?”

Her face breaks out into a giggle. She says, “That’s not really what I meant. I meant you’re just a great person.”

“But I am the best you’ve ever had, right?”

“Am _I_ the best _you’ve_ ever had?” she says coyly.

“Yeah,” he says, plainly and baldly. “You know you are.”

“Baby,” she breathes, leaning into him. “You just fucking get to me. All the time.”

 

 

  
He was ultra careful to not bite her anywhere that is visible to the general public, so there is no evidence that they had really great sex together written on her body when she shows up to work on Friday. She gets to the office, and it’s just the two of them — as it always is for the first hour. She licks her lips as she looks at him. The energy between them has shifted. She’s going to stop indulging him in his own perverse and self-defeating fantasy of being, barren, cold, and dead inside. She grabs her coffee and she says to him, “Got weekend plans?”

He says, “I’m gonna go to a concert with Dany on Saturday. But other than that, no, not really.”

She yawns because she didn’t get much sleep. She says, “Want to hang out?”

He says, “When?”

“Well, I can’t on Sunday, obviously. And you can’t on Saturday unless it’s during the day. Do you wanna hang out tonight or do like, lunch tomorrow? Oh, man, I know chicken isn’t your favorite, but there’s that roasted chicken place that I keep driving by on my way to work, and I keep thinking I should go try it. But it’s hard to eat there by myself, I think, because what am I going to do? Order an _entire chicken_ for myself? So do you wanna split a chicken? We can go there tonight or tomorrow afternoon. Which is better for you?”

He’s trying to think which instance has the greater chance of getting him laid again. He also wants to balance that with conveying to her that he’s not all about getting laid.

He says, “Tonight? You wanna grab a bite tonight?” This does not give him very much time to procure condoms though — and then he thinks he is so fucking _gross_ because he is presumptuous, and she is talking _a lot_ about chicken so she honestly just probably wants to eat chicken with him and probably does not want have sex again the fucking day after they _just_ had sex. He shouldn’t go buy condoms. Fuck. He’s a moron.

And then he grimaces — because he realizes that he’s _definitely_ not getting any sex tonight. He remembers he has plans already. He stops himself from groaning out loud. He says, “Fuck, I forgot. I actually am supposed to hang with Drogo tonight.”

“Oh,” she says. “What are you guys doing? Is it a private, personal thing? Can I come with? Would you guys want to eat chicken with me? Oh my God — we can eat a greater variety of things if there are three of us.”

 

 

  
Missy thinks that Drogo is really just, honestly, a big fucking drag to be around, obviously because of some personal issue he is having with Dany. She does not really want to listen to him bitch about it because eight of out ten times, he doesn’t listen to her because he fancies himself an expert on women, so why would he ever need to listen to a woman tell him things about women? The other reason is based just a little bit on pettiness. Drogo wasn’t great at being there when she was hurting over Grey — like, none of the times she was hurting over Grey. So maybe they just don’t have the kind of friendship where they can have deep conversations about relationships.

Drogo is not at all excited about the chicken — and she knows that chicken is probably like, everyone’s least favorite meat, but the wings and the legs are pretty on point. As far as roasted chicken goes, this is real good. And like, the family that owns this place is _so nice_ and they are just being all cute walking back and forth to refill waters and to ask if everything tastes good. Like, Drogo can muster up a smile for some of this, damn. The sides really good, too! She really likes the popovers. They are buttery.

“Hey,” she says. “What’s the difference between a popover and just a plain roll?”

“It’s lighter and has less flour in the dough — or batter,” says Grey. “I actually think you make popovers using a batter.”

“It’s so crispy and yummy!” she says, ripping a popover apart in her bare hands. “I like making little chicken sandwiches with these. I like putting a spoonful of potatoes and some greens in the sandwich.” She demonstrates for them, making herself a little chicken slider. “It’s a good ratio of chicken to carbs,” she says.

“Man, I honestly don’t get the desire to make everything into sandwiches in King’s Landing,” Grey says. “I don’t get why people are so lazy they have wrap everything in fucking bread so they can walk around eating things like monsters. Plus, when you make sandwiches with the popover, you smush all the insides so that the air holes collapse and it’s not as soft and fluffy anymore. Like, I don’t get your sandwich, Missandei.”

“No man, I’m not saying that this restaurant should change their dishes and make everything into sandwiches. I’m saying that when you want to shake up the routine a little, make a sandwich! Sometimes I want my popover by itself. Sometimes I swipe it in gravy. Sometimes I wrap it around chicken. Sometimes I make a _fucking sandwich,_ Grey.”

“Guys,” Drogo interrupts, just weary of listening to them debate this shit. “I think I need to break up with Dany.”

 

 

 


	33. Drogo and Missy are beefing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Drogo and Missandei have an explosive fight in front of Grey, forcing him to be torn in his loyalties. Spoiler: He goes after Drogo because those guys are like, goals.

 

 

 

  
As predicted, Drogo is being a complete dude about everything. And she generally stuffs food into her mouth silently as she listens to Drogo talk things out with Grey, who is surprisingly patient and supportive. It is really crazy.

Drogo makes the very obvious observation that Dany and Missy are really good friends. He asks her to tell him what Dany is thinking. Missy feels put on the spot, so she tells him that honestly, she and Dany don’t talk about him much.

He takes that as proof that Dany does not care about him, because of course he does. He says, “She is such a fucking frigid _bitch.”_

This rankles Missandei. She says, “She’s not a frigid bitch. Please don’t call her that.”

He says, “Well, what do you call someone who constantly fucks with other people’s brains for her own amusement? What do you call someone who is incapable of caring about someone else?”

“Bro,” Missy says. “You need to stop. She’s my friend. You’re being unfair.”

 _“I’m_ being unfair?” Drogo looks over at Grey in disbelief. Grey looks really tense and uncomfortable. Drogo repeats himself. He says, “I’m being _fucking unfair,_ when she’s the one constantly _spitting_ in my face?”

“Oh, she’s spitting in your face?” Missy says sarcastically, crossing her arms now. “My God, should I call the cops? Are you gonna be okay?”

“What the fuck _ever,_ Missandei. I ain’t trying to start _nothing_ with you, so you can get the _fuck_ off my _balls,_ already.”

“Guys,” Grey says softly. “Please don’t do this.”

“Man, Drogo!” she says, with false sympathy, ignoring Grey. “I get it! Your life is hard! You just wanna be _bad_ and _big,_ but it’s so hard because _some bitch_ is always on your fucking _massive_ testicles. And it’s like, how are you gonna spread your wings and fly, when _some bitch_ is always keeping you _down?”_

And she drops the act. She tells it to him straight. She tells Drogo that there ain’t no bitch trying to keep him down. This is fucking _Dany_ they are talking about. The only _bitch_ keeping him down is that figment in his head — this romanticized and excessively masculine idea he has of who he thinks he is and who he thinks he should be. His problem is that he’s really good-looking and handsome and comes from a culture that constantly raises the status and needs of men over women. So he spent his entire young life being told that he was the greatest and the best-looking and the most talented and the most athletic. He is probably a real king within his culture. But then he grew up and moved to a place where Dothraki are exoticized and marginalized, and he suddenly had to confront the idea that he is not automatically the best and the strongest and the one most worthy of respect. And because he’s had very _little_ practice at being humble and seeing other points of views, because he has really shitty coping mechanisms, he has a tendency to just _freak out_ when life gets tough. But he’s a man, so when he freaks out, it exhibits as extreme anger and sometimes violence. His insecurities manifest as rage, and she’s sure he convinces himself that he’s just so pissed because he is so oppressed. She’s sure he has not started qualifying his rage as fucking insecurity and self-consciousness. She tells him that a whole  _bunch_ of them feel marginalized — _all_ the _time_ — but they don't fucking respond like he does.

Missy tells him that she knows it’s probably really hard to be with Dany. It’s probably hard to be with someone who probably constantly makes him feel inferior by virtue of her own excellence, which was earned the hard way. She says, “This is why you typically date children. Because these girls are too young and too stupid to know better — so they put up with your shit. But now, you’re with someone who doesn't put up with your shit. I know it’s fucking _hard.”_

Drogo stares at her like their friendship is over. He stands up, scraping his chair backwards. He says, _“Fuck_ this shit,” as he stares her down. She looks back up at him, and she’s not that happy with him either. Because what the fuck is he gonna do? _Intimidate_ her into taking it all back? He says, “You know, you’ve gotten real mean.”

She crosses her arms. She says, “I don’t agree with that statement.”

 

 

  
Missy watches as Drogo leaves the restaurant, because of course he does. Of course he doesn’t stay behind to talk out shit or even to hash out shit through a shitty argument. Of course he just checks out and walks out angry. Of course he’s gonna come back to her later, crack a joke, and just act like none of it ever happened and none of the words were ever said.

Grey watches Drogo’s departing back for a moment before he turns back to her. He wants to go after Drogo. She already knows. He says, “Missandei —”

She says, “Go. Don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of the check. I’ll see you later.”

He gives her a quick half smile as he stands up. He says, “Thanks for throwing a bomb in the middle of dinner and giving me the opportunity to deal with the fallout by myself. This is gonna be really fun.”

She smiles back at him, looking up at him through heavy lidded eyes. She says, “I’ll make it up to you later.”

Well, that answers his question — about whether or not last night was a one-time thing. He says, “Well, fuck. Okay.” And then he blows right past her, touching her shoulder on his way out.

 

 

  
Grey is running after Drogo and calling out his name, telling him to slow down. Drogo completely doesn’t listen, so Grey just has to speed up and sprint over before Drogo gets to his car and fucking drives off.

Grey is panting hard when he makes it to the car, right at the same time Drogo does. Grey presses his sweaty hand to the window as he holds himself up, keeps Drogo from getting in, and catches his breath.

Drogo says, “Man, you didn’t have to give up your chance to go get fucked tonight just for my sake.”

Gasping, Grey says, “Oh, shit — you know — about that? You — can tell?”

“Man, she showed up to work with a hickey, like she is sixteen years old. Sloppy work, bud. Sloppy sloppy.”

“Oh — right.” Grey starts coughing spastically, some itchiness having gotten into his windpipe. He doubles over to clear it out, hacking loudly.

Drogo lightly pats him on the back to help.

 

 

  
Drogo didn’t eat much during dinner because he was moody and because he loves roasted chicken about as much as he loves a pork chop — that is, not that much. This is why he starts digging around in Grey’s fridge when they arrive at Grey’s place. There’s a bunch of weird shit in there — a container of pork liver, a package of beef tendon, a carton of eggs, many jars of fermented vegetables — just a bunch of stuff that Grey likes to eat. Drogo now regrets not mowing down on chicken breast when he had the chance. He can’t get full on a jar of pickled greens.

“Man, I’ll make you food,” Grey says, pulling open his pantry and pulling out a container full of like, barley. Oh great. Grains.

Grey pretty much reads Drogo’s mind. He says, “Man, you can’t be fucking picky when it was your temper tantrum that is the reason you are still hungry.”

 

 

  
They’ve traveled together extensively and have probably had hundreds if not thousands of meals together. Grey intimately knows what Drogo likes to eat. Drogo likes to eat stuff that is more substantial than what Grey likes. Drogo likes funky meat and salty smells. And Drogo loves fat. So Grey starts cramming a bunch of fat into the barley. He crams a bunch of onion and garlic into the barley because Drogo also really likes alliums. Grey picked barley because it’s really filling, and he does not have a shit ton of meat in his freezer. Grey shoves more carbs into the little bit of ground beef that he found. He shoves salt, more garlic, more pepper, more and more carbs in the form of rice and flour, just a bunch of shit that Drogo likes into the beef — and then he cooks it in fat. And then he fries an egg in the fat, undercooking it a little because that’s the shit Drogo goes for. And then Grey crams it all together into a bowl and tops it with a radish pickle that he found because it’s a little sweet and Drogo also likes sweet shit.

He slides the steaming bowl over to Drogo mutely.

Drogo is waiting with a spoon. Drogo generally watched Grey efficiently and magically make food happen — and it generally looks pretty fucking classic and right. This is the kind of shit that Grey is good at. Making amazing shit out of nothing. Drogo takes a bite. He says, “Oh my God, this is awesome. What the fuck. You did it so fast.”

Grey shrugs. “It’s just a bunch of shit you like, man.”

“Man, you’re good at everything. And it’s so fucking annoying sometimes.”

There is a pregnant pause. Grey usually does not directly respond this kind of thing — he generally neither confirms nor denies his abilities in comparison to Drogo’s, mostly because it’d go nowhere good and he doesn’t see the point in that kind of comparison. But he realizes that this has been an ongoing pain point. He says, “I work really hard at getting good at things. I don’t feel like it comes effortlessly.”

“No, man. I know,” Drogo says, sighing. “I watch you work hard. So I know.”

“For what it’s worth, I don’t think Missandei is completely right about you,” Grey says. “She’s biased. And she missed out on stuff — in the time that she was away.”

 

 

  
Drogo knows that his envy and jealousy of Grey is pointless, complex, and probably healthy in a certain way. He slowly eats his dinner and pulls sips from a glass of water as Grey starts soaping up pans and cooking utensils in the sink. Drogo starts comparing and contrasting out loud, speculating that one of the many differences between them is that Grey grew up all scared and twerpy and constantly bullied, and Grey learned to cope by just locking his shit down tight always. Because the fewer flaws that he exhibits, the less chance there is of him getting fucked with. If Grey is not perfect, then he is vulnerable.

On the flip, Drogo grew up just getting his stupid ass kissed constantly — by his mom, as the eldest boy, by his coaches, then by his art teachers, and then by women — a whole shit ton of women. Missy is probably right in the sense that all of this adoration probably made him emotionally _fragile as fuck._ He will give her that — but it was annoying that she was saying shit like she was educating him. As if he _doesn’t know_ he has been fucking crippled by how much his mother fucking loves him and how hot he is. Like, _duh._

Grey laughs, elbows deep in suds. He says, “I love how you can make any conversation about how good-looking you think you are.”

“Man, that shit is sometimes a burden,” Drogo says. “It’s like, you’re really lucky, for going through puberty so late in life. Like, you were an ugly and weird little thing when you were a kid. And it made you really _smart_ and really _deep_ and it fucking gave you this understanding of the _human condition_ that hot people like me just don’t get.”

 

 

  
As Drogo takes off his pants, his shirt, and as he pulls back the covers on Grey’s bed, he says, “So did you wash the bedding after you guys fucked on this?”

“No, not yet,” Grey says blandly.

 _“Nice,”_ Drogo says, neatly hopping onto Grey’s king-sized bed. He starts rolling all over in it, pressing his nose into the sheets, sniffing around.

“You’re so fucking gross,” Grey says, as he comes out of his closet after changing.

Drogo is widely spreading his limbs out, kind of doing a snow angel in the bed. He says, “This bed is _huge_ compared to your old one. You totally thought about me when you bought this bed, didn’t you? Don’t even lie. You totally thought about me and my needs when you bought this bed, didn’t you?”

 

 

  
In the dark, in Grey’s really nice sheets, Drogo rubs his own chest as he says, “Man, I’ve missed this. For some reason, I thought it wasn’t okay to sleep over at your place after Dany and I got all official. I don’t know why I thought that.”

“Well, it’s probably a little weird for two grown men who aren’t in a sexual relationship with each other to semi-regularly co-sleep after spending all day together at work.”

“Man, I don’t think so!” Drogo says. “I like talking with you at bedtime. I like the convenience of being able to fall asleep in a comfortable place while we’re ass-deep in conversation. Like, _this_ fucking makes _sense._ Like, of all fucking things in my life, _this makes sense_ to me.”

Grey sighs. “Yeah, man. I honestly derive a lot of comfort out of this, too. When I was really depressed and devastated after Missandei, just having you physically close by was honestly like — it just really helped me feel less alone and sad.”

This co-sleeping tendency came about because Drogo used to knock on Grey’s hotel room and he used to wordlessly crawl into Grey’s bed after a long day of shooting on the show — after she was gone. Drogo used to plop into bed and start telling long-winded stories about himself to try and keep Grey’s mind focused on something besides her. Grey has these memories of Drogo’s rumbly voice being the last thing he heard before falling asleep.

 

 

  
Drogo gets woken up by the buzzing of his phone as a text message comes through. He rolls over to check it, kind of afraid it’s Dany. But he’s pleasantly surprised and relieved to see that it’s Yara. She is asking him if he feels like dim sum. He texts her back and tells her that he’s a strong yes, but he has to see what Grey says when Grey wakes up.

Drogo snaps a photo of Grey’s sleeping face — probably one of the rare times Grey’s expression is completely relaxed and not wearing bitchface so strongly. He sends Yara the photo.

As predicted, Yar does not even ask why Drogo is in bed with Grey, because Yara is a true ride or die bitch. She just sends him back a few heart emojis and writes that she thinks Grey looks so cute when he sleeps. Drogo thinks that if Yara ever wants to power couple-up, he’d marry her ass in a fucking heartbeat.

 

 

  
He wearing Grey’s most elastic clothes as Drogo gives her a hug and a kiss on the side of her head in greeting after walking up to her. She looks fresh and well-rested actually. He says, “How was your trip home?”

“Um, let me just say that I’m glad to be back in this overpopulated hellhole,” she says, letting Drogo go so she can hug Grey. “I have missed this place. Anything new with you guys?”

Drogo has missed _this._ He has missed the three of them hanging out like a small posse exuding excessive coolness. “Oh, Grey and Missy are fucking each other again,” he says, as a bunch of screaming kids run around in front of them in the lobby area. He blurts out this development because Yara might as well know.

“No shit?” Yara says, fairly unfazed. “Well, well, well. Now we can spend half of lunch talking about how Grey can be better at oral.”

Grey shrugs. “Sure. I could use some pointers.” They’ve been friends for so long that it’s now kind of hard to trigger each other with the things that used to draw out sensitivities. This is actually precisely the reason why Yara and Drogo started resorting to mindless groping or tickles. Those are the easiest ways to get a visceral response from Grey these days.

“Ahh!” Grey yelps, trying to yank himself away, lightly slamming himself against the live lobster tank right next to them. She full-on pressed the flat of her hand against the front of his pants

“Yeah!” Yara growls, patting his booty enthusiastically. “That’s right! So cute and body conscious!”

 

 

  
Grey generally feels like he’s smack in the middle of a lot of contention. Drogo and Missandei are kind of fighting and he feels caught in the middle there. Dany and Drogo are definitely fighting, and he also feels awkward about being a child of almost-divorce. For instance, after spending Friday night and most of Saturday’s daylight with Drogo, Grey gets delivered back to his apartment so that he can change his clothes and wait around in the lobby for Dany to pick him up. He is being traded around like chattel.

Dany doesn’t want to talk about Drogo at all — and that is completely fine with Grey. He doesn’t want to talk about Drogo with Dany, either. They just go jam out to some chamber music for a couple hours before stopping off at a greasy spoon before the night’s end.

 

 

  
Drogo and Missandei are weirdly really bad at hiding the tension between them — it’s not at all like when Drogo and Grey fight or when Grey and Missandei fight. With Grey being the common denominator there, things are very well compartmentalized and demarcated between work and personal in those moments of conflict. Drogo tends to be emotionally demonstrative and cannot even look at Missandei without just ropes of tension rolling off of him. Missandei is self-righteous, and she cannot walk away from the conflict. She always has to meet Drogo at his level.

The staff completely notices, and the office is extra silent and extra tense as a result. Everyone is kind of miserable and tiptoeing around each other as a result. For possibly the first time ever, the kids start flocking to Grey because they see him as a source of relief. They keep making their way into his office so that they can randomly get criticized and impatiently sighed at.

It’s Osha who finally gets tired of the bullshit and shuts the door to Grey’s office after she enters. She says, “You need to be a boss and deal with those two. They are really distracting and hard to work with right now.”

“Excuse me, I don’t have to do anything,” Grey says.

She gives him a look — like she’s so fucking disappointed in him. They’ve also known each other for years.  
  
“Yeah. Okay, fine,” he says.

 

 

  
Grey is not good at conflict resolution. Like, this is so obviously not one of his talents. What he does is that he has Missandei and Drogo stay after work, after the rest of the staff has left. And then when it’s just the three of them, Grey just stands here with his arms crossed over his chest and his butt pressed into the edge of a desk.

He tiredly says, “You guys need to work out your shit because I’ve been getting a few complaints. And it’s really annoying for me to listen to the staff bitch and moan and generally talk about whatever’s bothering them. So you gotta knock this shit off so that the staff will go back to talking to you guys about shit that bothers them.” Grey gestures vaguely between Drogo and Missandei. He says, “Okay, so fucking start working it out. Like, I mean right now.”

Missandei looks at him skeptically, also with her arms folded over her chest. She says, “This is absurd.”

Drogo actually agrees with that. He says, “Yeah, man. This is not really how you get people to get along.”

 

 

Grey is exhausted by the long week and also by other people’s problems, so he’s like, whatever. He tried. He just starts grabbing his stuff and pulling straps over his head. He bids Missandei and Drogo a good night. He tells them to lock up after they leave.

 

 

  
Neither Drogo nor Missy are ready to forgive each other. Drogo still feels really stung by all of the stuff she said about him — mostly stung by the fact that she holds such a low opinion of him and sees him that way. Missandei is so tired of Drogo’s fragility and inability to take any criticism without getting mad. She is tired of years spent eating shit and accommodating him just so his ego does not get bruised.

They don’t talk about any of this, though. They don’t feel comfortable enough to talk about any of it with each other yet.

Instead, Drogo says, “So, you and Grey, huh?”

She raises a brow. She strategically says nothing.

Drogo kind of shrugs. He says, “This probably goes without saying, but you really destroyed him the last time. And it was really hard for a while there. You _better not_ fuck him up again. This _better be_ real for you.”

Wow. A threat. Classic. She clenches her jaw. She says, “Or else what? What are you gonna do to me if I mess up your friend?”

Again — with the fucking low-ass expectations she has for him. Drogo shakes his head because she doesn’t fucking understand at all. He says, “You know what I’m gonna do? Fucking just take _care_ of him while he expends monumental effort toward pulling himself _back together again.”_

 

 

 

 


	34. Grey meets Dany's assistant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The gang prepare for a two-week break. They all meet Dany's infamous assistant.

 

 

 

Before he ran out of the chicken place to chase after Drogo, Missandei told him that she owes him one — which he likes because it makes sex sound super transactional — and he’s so good at being a sexually active human that he does not know how he’s meant to cash this in. It’s not like she gave him a coupon. It’s not like he can tear off the coupon for one free sex session and just hand it to her. She continues to be unnervingly calm and cool about everything — except for Drogo — she’s still a festering sore with Drogo. But there’s only so much Grey can fucking do there.

Grey remembers how she used to fixate and obsess over their relationship in the past, how she used to get sensitive because he was not expressing his feelings for her so transparently all the time. He remembers how he sometimes found that to be a burden and how he sometimes asked her to just give him some more space and alone time. He finds that he kind of misses those days right about now, the days when he held more control in the relationship dynamic.

Missandei’s been pretty friendly and nice to him. And they’ve exclusively seen each other only at work. Enough time has passed that he starts to figure that she wasn’t serious or she probably did not mean what he thought she meant. And it’s cool. He shouldn’t have made assumptions. They still work together — he has stopped articulating it as her working _for_ him because she exercised her option to purchase membership. According to the agreement, it’ll be five years before she’s fully vested. She already has more than one under her belt. Even though it’s Missandei, it still felt like he was selling off the forearm of his baby.

The fact that she is part owner makes what they have done together slightly less shady to him though.

 

 

  
Instead of breaking up with her, Drogo tells Dany that they are closing down the office for the holidays, and he is going home. It’s a long overdue trip. He asks her if she has plans. And if she does not have plans, would she fucking like to be interrogated by his family members?

He makes it sound incredibly enticing. Dany first instinct is to say no. She has a lot of work still. She can’t take time off. She has her fucking brother still — even though he is awful, she still spends the actual holiday with him.

But she has decided to continue laboring underneath this boulder of a relationship with Drogo. Because she’s getting older, he’s convenient to be around, and also probably because she has developed a fondness for him. She says, “So I can’t take two weeks off. But I can take a weekend off. But not on the actual holiday. Would that work?”

He smiles at her. He looks relieved. He says, “Yeah.”

“Good,” she says.

“My mom is going to hate you.”

She is unsurprised and not rattled. She says, “Probably.”

 

 

  
It’s been an entire month since they’ve had sex, and that is pretty annoying to her. But they’ve been busy trying to wrap everything up before the holiday break, and they’re not yet at the point in this thing where she can text him or call him and be like, hey, want to come over and fuck? Also, Drogo completely got into her head, and she got all self-conscious about being careless with another person’s feelings. She got wrapped up in all of the things that she cannot promise because she is older and smarter this time around. She cannot promise that it’d be forever. She cannot promise that she’d stay forever. She cannot promise that they won’t hurt each other. She cannot even promise that it’d work out in the short term. She _can_ probably promise that she will love him until she dies, but that seems like a fairly paltry promise in light of everything else.

He’s going to the Summer Isles for the break — to work and to just be there. She’s not going to see him for about two weeks. She thinks that she needs to try and get sex to happen before he leaves.

 

 

  
“Bye, Grey!” Pyp says, opening up his arms for a hug.

Grey is like, “Jesus, it’s just two weeks. We’re not saying bye forever.” His words kind of bum Pyp out, just a little bit. Grey accepts the hug anyway. He says, “Have a nice break.”

 

 

  
Drogo says, “Oh, shit,” when Jaime shows up with Brienne for group dinner on their last night together before a few of them peace out for a bit. Tyrion and Sansa have also brought their daughter, so this is really turning out to be quite the family affair. Drogo gestures between Jaime and Brienne and says, “So this is happening? This is like, a thing now?”

“I mean, kind of?” says Jaime, grimacing before he sits down. It’s all early on, and there has just been a lot of talking and a lot of guilt on her end, about Tormund.

“I can’t wait for Yar to get here,” Drogo mutters. “She’s gonna have opinions and stuff to say.”

 

 

  
As these get-togethers usually go, they generally break up into micro-cliques. Usually Jaime and his brother are thing. Usually Grey, Drogo, and Yara are a thing. Usually Sansa has to brave it on the outside because she doesn’t do the same kind of work they do and she does not have the same sense of humor they do. Usually, Brienne has to also brave it on the outside, because she’s not fast with quips, so she is forced to just listen as they throw shit back and forth. The inclusion of Missandei changes the dynamic a little bit, in a way that Drogo cannot put his finger on. Dany arrives to dinner late — with her assistant — and that also changes the dynamic. By a lot.

“Sorry for forcing her on you guys and ruining dinner,” Dany says breathlessly, pulling in her chair. “But we have a few things to hash out, and I was going to miss dinner if I didn’t bring her.”

“Uh, you’re not ruining our dinner,” Tyrion says kindly to Dany’s assistant. “Grab a seat.”

 

 

  
They have never met Dany’s assistant before. So a couple of things: Dany exaggerates and is a real asshole. Her assistant is not at all an idiot. Also, Dany and her assistant are fucking hilarious together.

At least Drogo, Jaime, and Tyrion think so. Brienne and Sansa are kind of horrified.

Dany’s assistant is fairly young, but about the same age as the kids who work for Drogo and Grey. She has probably lasted so long with Dany because she is a little ditzy and stuff doesn’t necessarily sink in very deeply enough to hurt her. The flipside of that is that she is a little self-centered and likes to talk about herself a lot, especially to new people. Dany _hates_ listening to people talk about their lives. So she constantly snaps, “Irri, no one fucking cares about your boring life,” as Irri tells them about this Snapchat fight that her boyfriend got into with his best friend because the last time the best friend was over at their place, their dog bit the best friend’s girlfriend’s face. But then, the girlfriend shouldn’t have provoked the dog because the first thing they tell guests is not to get face-level with their dog.

Jaime keeps messing with Dany and saying, “Oh, so what was the Snapchat fight about, specifically?”

“Daniel — my boyfriend’s best friend — was upset that his girlfriend was bit in the face! But I was saying that they gave me no indication that they were mad at dinner! How are you gonna be all dramatic on Snapchat if you weren’t even mad at dinner!”

“Sometimes people realize they are mad after the fact,” Jaime says.

“That’s what —”

“Irri!” Dany cuts in. “Shut up. He’s messing with you. He doesn’t give a shit about your life.”

“Psh!” Jaime says, swatting the air in front of Dany’s face. “I _do_ care.”

Dany glares at him. She says, “Irri, go ask why our food is taking so long.”

“Okay!” Irri says, popping up like a crocus on the first day of spring. “Be right back!”

Once Irri has her back turned, once she walks off to go harass their server in the name of her boss, Jaime drops his face into his left hand as he has a bit of an uncontrolled laugh fit. He says, “Oh my God. Dany!”

She says, “She’s actually the most competent assistant I’ve had in years.”

 

 

  
Irri does not know that Dany is with Drogo because Dany does not use names. Irri constantly has to read her boss’ mind on things, and sometimes she guesses wrong and just gets chewed out. All Irri knows is that Dany complains about emotional men a lot. And Irri also knows that Dany just has Irri block off personal time in the calendar all the time. Irri put two and two together and figured that Dany is spending time with her boyfriend in those hours. Irri tries to get Dany to have a snack before she runs off to meet her boyfriend, so that Dany is less cranky. Dany gets super cranky when she is hungry. Dany tends to be a little bit hungry all the time. Dany hates bananas because she’s mildly allergic to them. Also avocados. Carrots and nuts are a good snack for Dany. Out of habit, Irri starts scanning the menu for food that Dany could eat. Without being asked, she also orders food that Dany can eat, just in case Dany hates her food and wants to eat Irri’s food instead.

At some point, Irri scans her eyes around the table and when she sees Grey, she says, “Oh my _gosh!_ I love your work!” She specifically means she loves the photos that he’s taken of Dany. She has not seen any of his other work.

He looks perturbed. He actually starts sinking down in his chair.

“I never thought I’d ever get to meet you in person because Dany is like, grrr all the time. Dany says you don’t like her work events and you’re too busy, and that’s why you don’t show up to them.”

Grey mutters, “Stop.” He realizes that Irri thinks that he and Dany are together, just like a lot of people think he and Dany are together. And predictably, what typically happens after Grey asks people to stop talking is that they actually start talking more.

 

 

  
Irri starts talking his fucking ear off about the most random shit.

She talks a lot about her life and Dany is right, her life is inherently boring. She talks a lot about how her boyfriend just bought a new camera. She asks Grey if he’s really good at Photoshop. She titters and laughs at herself and she says, duh! He has to be good at Photoshop! She asks him what stuff he likes to take pictures of the most — besides Dany.

He aggressively says, “I’m _not_ a photographer!” He’s irritated that Dany is just sitting back, grinning, and just letting this child happen to him.

“Oh!” she says, pretty unshaken by his aggression because she’s super used to Dany. “Oh, I know you do video stuff, too. Dany’s told me. Oh my gosh, do you do weddings? My sister’s getting married, and she’s looking for a videographer! Oh my gosh, do you have a business card?”

 _“No,_ I don’t have a card, I don't do weddings, and your sister can’t afford me,” he says, with just a lot of hostility, as Drogo chuckles beside him, as Yara reaches out to squeeze the back of his neck and gently rock him in his seat. She thinks that Grey _never_ says shit like this. He _never_ throws his weight around like this. This is _crazy_ and _awesome._

“Oh! My sister’s fiance’s family is _super rich,”_ Irri says. “How much do you cost?”

Oh God. That’s his trigger. Missy suddenly reaches out to touch him, too. She leans over Yara and grabs his hand momentarily to squeeze it. Everyone at the table _except_ Irri knows that he’s about to lose it. Tyrion looks like every word Irri is saying is giving him _life._ His eyes are wide like saucers, and he’s smiling _so hard._

Missy works with Grey nearly all day, nearly everyday. She’s seen him unleash a shit ton of vitriol on the kids when the contrast on images is too high and things are too saturated. For Irri, Missy does what she does for the kids. Missandei says, “Grey, you need to pee. Go pee.”

He suddenly stands up. He doesn’t fully realize he’s been trained. He just says, “I actually do need to fucking pee.” And then he leaves to go to the men’s room.

 

 

  
“You’re killing me, Missy!” Tyrion shouts, pointing a finger at her. “He was about to lose it, and it’s been _years_ since I’ve seen a real good Grey meltdown.”

Dany pats Irri on the shoulder approvingly. She says, “Good job,” smiling at Irri.

And with a straight face, Irri says, “Dany told me to ask him if he is good at Photoshop at some point tonight. And also to figure out a way to ask him how much he costs.” Some of her ditziness has faded away, making the rest of them realize that she kind of amplifies it on purpose.

Tyrion is bouncing his daughter in his lap as he says, “Damn. Daenerys, you are a savage.”

 

 

  
Dany has to leave dinner early in order to continue working with Irri, and as an apology, she picks up the entire tab. Dany quickly goes around the table picking out her favorites because she likes for goodbyes to be efficient and she can’t hug every fucking person. She gives all the women a quick squeeze from behind. She shoves Jaime’s back and tries to make him plant his face into his food. She touches Tyrion and the baby. She runs her hand over Drogo’s shoulder — she’s going to see him later anyway. She grabs onto Grey’s head and kisses him on the cheek as he shoves food into his mouth crankily because now he knows she messed with him just for the fun of it. She earnestly says, “You have a wonderful trip,” as she tightly squeezes his shoulders with her arms. “And stay safe, okay?”

 

 

  
When it’s time for the rest of them to disperse and say bye for a while — at least until after the holidays and family obligations are done — they do it outside of the restaurant on the sidewalk. When Missandei gets to him, she lightly grasps his forearm after their brief whisper of a hug. She says, “Can I take you home?” She means that she wants to drive him home so that he doesn’t have to bother with the subway — and also so they can have sex again.

She’s not altogether sure he understands this. This gets confirmed when he says, “Yara already told me she was taking me home.”

Missandei says, “Hey, do you want some _water,_ Grey?”

He looks startled. Then he says, “Oh.” He says, “Uh, yeah. That would be nice.”

Missy leans over to rub Yara’s back and get her attention. Missy says, “I’m driving Grey home.”

“He’s closer to me, though,” Yara says, swiveling around. “You’d have to like, drive north to drop him off before you head back south again.”

 _“Yara,”_ Missandei says. And that’s all she needs to say. Because Yara is the fucking best. Much quicker than Grey.

“Oh!” Yara says approvingly. _“Okay._ Go nuts. Drive his ass home all you want.”

 

 

  
He kind of tries to make it kind of romantic because he thinks that he should? He tries to make this look like it’s not all about sex. He like, tries to have a conversation with her in the car, and he asks her a few questions about what she has planned for break. She’s going to do a short car trip up north with her brother, his girlfriend, and the girls so that they can see snow. Grey tells her that sounds nice — and he’s lying because long car rides are the fucking worst. He asks her how stuff is going with Mars, how stuff is going with Camille, and Sarah — how is Sarah?

Missandei says, “Oh my God, she’s back with her boyfriend. They threaten to break up with each other once a week. Sarah is constantly paranoid that he’s going to cheat on her again. I really hope those two crazy kids make it work. I hope they get married and Sarah gets pregnant like, tomorrow and _doesn’t_ go to college.”

 

 

  
In his apartment, he’s trying to ask her if she’d like a snack or a drink — even though they _just_ ate dinner. He’s trying to work through his own anxiety as she kicks off her shoes and starts pulling him toward his bedroom.

As she tries to kiss him, as he kind of fights her on it a little bit, dodging her lips so he can speak. He says, “Do you want to talk a little bit first?”

She says, _“No.”_ She’s been thinking about getting back in his pants for a whole entire month. Her patience is kind of non-existent. She doesn’t have the time for him act out this illusion that he is a gentleman and she has virtue that needs to be preserved. Obviously at the end of the song and dance, they are gonna fuck each other a little messy and a little weird. She wants to skip the fake part of the performance.

 

 

  
He knows that she’s trying to make this go fast because his flight is pretty early tomorrow and she wants him to get as much sleep as he can. He watches as she takes off her clothes right away when they reach the bedroom. And he’s like, impressed and really turned on by her efficiency.

And then she starts taking off _his_ clothes, shoving off his shirt, planting her wet mouth and tongue on his neck and then down his chest as her hands take care of his belt, and the closure on his jeans. He lets her strip him down to nothing. He lets her yanks him onto his own bed, spreading her legs, hissing as he nestles in between there nakedly with the aid of gravity. He groans at the intimate contact. The thing about this is that it feels so _fucking good_ but he’s always a little bit tortured and a little bit plagued by his own guilt. She loves him. He hasn’t said it back to her. He’s not ready for that — for what that means and what it entails. He cannot give her what she deserves. He is still very prone to protecting himself — and he still sees her as this threat to his mental and emotional stability. He keeps holding her at a distance because he cannot do another world-shattering break-up with her again. He feels like he’s just using her for her body. He feels like he’s not doing enough to stop this. He feels like he should be doing more — he should be a better person.

She grabs his butt and she hikes him up higher — making the both of them gasp and groan. She says, “Protection?”

He says, _“Fuck!”_ And then he says, “I didn’t want to assume.”

She smears herself against him. She grabs his head and twists it so she can kiss him. Against his mouth and his moan, she says, “Baby, you need to start assuming.” And then she spontaneously shoves him back a little bit as she rolls over on the bed and starts pawing around the floor for her purse.

She digs around in there then she extracts a condom, and then a whole entire fucking _box of condoms._ She says, “Luckily, I expected this from you. So I came prepared.” She drops the condom and the box onto his nightstand.

 

 

  
They have really great sex together. There’s a lot of delirious kissing and licking. There’s a lot of pleasurable skin to skin rubbing. There’s a lot of full body stuff. There’s a lot of stuff with his face on her boobs and then his hand in between her legs. And there is a handsy stuff on her end, with her almost bringing him to completion and ending it early for him with her enthusiasm. They have to take a break and just do some non-French kissing for a while, for him to chill out a little bit so that he doesn’t just lose it when he gets his penis inside her for the first time in a very long time.

He still shudders, and he still dies a little bit when he gets himself inside of her. He still say, “Okay, hold on,” as he clenches up everything to hold it all at bay.

She shifts her hips a little bit. It’s just a little tug.

“Oh no,” he groans, looking really pained.

Oh awesome. He still looks like this when he fucks.

She laughs, and he says, “I lost a little bit. But we’re okay.”

“Oh yeah,” she says, as he pulls out of her, as her nails lightly drag down his back, she looks up at the ceiling before closing her eyes. “You’re real fucking _okay.”_

 

 

  
After they are done and she’s dressed again — dressed in her sticky underwear and rumpled clothes, unbalanced in her heels, she asks him if he wants a ride to the airport tomorrow. He tells her that he’s fine. Drogo’s got him.

She kisses him before she says bye for two weeks. She kissing him deeply and running her hand around his back as she holds his body to hers. She says, “Have a good trip, okay? Will you call me sometimes so I know you’re still okay, and you’re still alive?”

“Yeah,” he says, kissing her back. And then haltingly, he says, “I think — I’m going to miss you.”

She smiles softly at him. She doesn’t think she is reading this situation with him wrong. She doesn’t think she’s fooling herself. She really _is_ just taking it one day at a time. She knows that this can end up just hurting so fucking _much._ But that is the nature of risk, isn’t it? She still has this mission to be adamantly truthful with him, because that’s what he deserves from her. She says, “I’m definitely going to miss you. I would really love it if you called me for a chat every now and then.”

 

 

 

 


	35. Dany meets the parent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone's off doing their separate things on their break. Missy goes on a road trip. Drogo introduces his mom to Dany. Grey exhibits his fear of commitment.

 

 

 

Drogo told Sona to prime their mother because he will be bringing his abuser home to meet the rest of the family, but when he arrives, he can quickly tell that Sona did a real shitty job prepping their mom for Dany. For instance, their mom doesn’t even know that Dany is white, so he had to deal with that annoyance, with his mom’s fixation that his children will not be Dothraki or know Dothraki and their traditions, and their family line will die within a generation — and he is trying to tell his mom to _relax_ because ain’t no one fucking getting married or having babies any fucking time soon — but she generally talks over him, her fixation having shifted to the fact that she does not know how to feed an outsider or talk to an outsider or know what to do with outsiders, really.

When he gets a reprieve from their mom, he’s like, “What the fuck have you been _doing,_ Sona?”

In disbelief, Sona says, “My job? Living my life? Remembering that my life does not revolve around your shit?”

 

 

  
Everyone was really optimistic and told Missandei she should arrive by nine. Nine was when they started packing. It’s now eleven and shit is still getting moved around in the SUV. Missandei tried to help, but after one freak out by Sarah when she couldn’t find her backpack because her auntie moved it, Missy was done. She doesn’t manage for no hysterical teenagers. Missy generally just sits in the backseat with the door thrown open as she watches her family members run back and forth, acting like they’ve never gone anywhere before, asking each other if they should take a space heater or various blankets.

Other than Missy, Jess is probably first one ready. She walks over and mutely hands Missy a hot cup of coffee. Jess’ face has no makeup on it, and her braids are tucked under a silk scarf. When Missy came back home and mentioned to her brother that he’s dating against type, and it’s a good look on him, Mars muttered that he don’t fuck with no crazy white bitches no more. And Missy was like, really glad for his personal growth because Jess is legit, but also not super crazy about the misogyny. But small victories and all of that.

“Dad!” Sarah shouts, trying to shoot her voice through the open door of the house. “Have you seen my jacket! I can’t find it!”

“Christ!” Mars shouts back, still in the house. “How you gonna leave this house without a goddamn jacket! Borrow one from your sister!”

“Dad! It’s my second jacket! It’s the pink velour one!”

“Check the dryer!”

“Dad! You _washed_ it?” she shrieks, her jaw dropping open dramatically. “You can’t just wash it!”

“If you leave your dirty shit on the floor of my house, I can do whatever the fuck I want to it!” Mars throws back, finally appearing in the open doorway of the house. He has a bunch of breakfast sandwiches stacked on a plate. “And I think you mean, _“Thank you,_ Dad!’” he shouts at Sarah.

 

 

  
He’s probably bad at learning lessons from the past because the first thing he does when he lands in the Summer Isles is that he goes and finds a food stall that serves this trotter soup on a scorching day. He tries to muddle through his food order with his broken Summer Tongue — the vendor asks him how he even talks the way he does — meaning how he speaks a version of a language that was almost wiped out, complete with weird anachronisms that people are always laughing at him over. His language skills are not advanced enough for him to explain the nuances of why he speaks the way he does — people flee a place in trauma and their culture freezes in an instant and stays locked up and trapped in a new world as those left behind continue to evolve the culture into something new and foreign to those who escaped. He can’t explain this because his Summer Tongue is really remedial, so he just tells the vendor that the way he speaks is the fault of his mother and his father.

It takes him a day or two to get used to the different flora and fauna. He gets sick and feverish and has weird poops again — but this time, he pounds bottled water and makes it through to the other side fairly unscathed. They are in the rainy season, so the air is fairly humid and he is constantly soaked in his own sweat.

He has the same cleaning lady as before — because he keeps renting the same house and she generally belongs with the house. She looks happy to see him, but they have a very professional relationship, so generally all that passes is a nod of the head whenever they cross paths.

 

 

  
Drogo spends the first week at home hanging out with his mother during the day — driving her around, taking her grocery shopping, taking her to her friends house so that she can show him off like the prodigal son that he is — and he spends his nights catching up with some of his boys. Khozaevo is married with three kids and works as a technician at the airport. Najaho is married with two kids and one on the way, and he is some sort of assembly worker at a plant that makes microchips and batteries for phones. Qovvo is divorce and dating, has two kids with his ex, and is a diesel mechanic.

Drogo is way fucking bewildering and kind of has these feminine and kind of white qualities compared to these guys. Drogo is artsy and plays around with cameras all day. Drogo lives in King’s Landing among a lot of outsiders. Drogo bought his mother an entire house. The things that Drogo focuses on in casual conversation are sometimes awkwardly esoteric. Drogo went to and graduated from college. Drogo has to work really hard not to come across like he thinks he’s better than them. In spite of his efforts, Drogo comes across like he thinks he’s better than them. That is because he actually thinks he’s better than them. He has also changed a lot since they were kids together.

To a certain extent though, Drogo is able to revert and fade back into an old persona. It takes him a few days to relax his body and not be so uptight and tense all the time — and it’s funny because in King’s Landing, he’d never be qualified as tense and uppity — but here he is. It takes Drogo a few hours of chatting with his boys to drop this tendency to over enunciate in speech. His Dothraki flattens a bit on his tongue and a bunch of random slang words start coming back to him as his mind fights to pick up and adopt new ones. He finds the entire process and effort to be completely exhausting. He is arriving at the realization that he has gotten fucking soft and he has gotten fucking white in the time that he’s been away. It’s sometimes feels shameful that he let this happen. At the same time, it sometimes feels justified and like a point of pride.

 

 

  
The first bit of snowfall they see is about three hours into the drive north. They stop off at a diner in Fairmarket because Sarah has to pee and has been talking incessantly about how her legs ache from being immobile in a car for so long.

They take a meal break — just this conspicuous Naathi family sticking out like a sore thumb in a small town. At least Missy, Mars, and Jess think so. The girls demonstrate a generational difference and perhaps a culture and demographic shift or greater social awareness in society by being largely unconcerned and largely relaxed. Missy, Mars, and Jess half-expect to be hassled in some way. The girls expect to be catered to, as they are anywhere else. Sarah picks up the menu and puts in between herself and her sister, trying to figure out what they want to share.

They cannot make a decision and the server has to come back like, three times to check in on them. Missandei’s eyes follow the server around — and the woman is actually fairly nonplussed and friendly. Missandei quietly whispers to Mars, “Your kids just don’t even give a fuck.”

He says, “I _know._ It’s wild.” He means it as a both a good thing and a bad thing.

 

 

  
He can’t really say that he’s really busy. It’s a little hard to be super busy in the Summer Isles. Shops stutter open in the morning and then shutter close at night fairly early. There is nothing open 24/7 like there is at home. He spends his days traveling around and eating, taking photos or collecting footage, talking to various people — and he spends his nights reading and organizing his work. He doesn’t quite ever know what he’s doing with all of this — but he feels like he needs to preserve it before it is gone forever. He doesn’t want to draw this straight line between his parents, their deaths, and this place though. It’s too on the nose. It’s too neat and pat.

Even though he’s not that busy, he puts off calling her. He has called and talked to Drogo a few times — the time difference generally resulting in one of them being sleepy and the other carrying most of the conversation. Drogo keeps talking about the notion of home and what a trip it is to be home.

Grey knows he should probably call her — he _could_ call her if he wanted to. But he wouldn’t know what he’d say to her, and she is probably busy herself. Instead, he opts to just send her a text. He tells her that he’s still fine — he’s still alive and kicking.

 

 

  
Everywhere they go, everyone stares at Dany — in awe or in this vague hostility. Sometimes they transfer these disapproving looks onto him, for fucking this woman and for bringing her into their space. Part of preservation of culture and fighting off would-be colonizers for centuries of their existence involves an ingrained suspicion of foreigners, especially white foreigners.

Dany’s actually pretty unaffected by the staring — because she’s used to being stared at — and also by the open dislike. She knows that she rubs a lot of people the wrong way. Also, she was in love with a Dothraki when she was very young. She remembers how his family reacted at first when they met her. She has already cried over that, enough for a lifetime. She was young and sensitive then. She has excised that kind of emotion from her body so that now, she feels nothing besides a vague distaste for Dothraki clannishness.

Drogo constantly surprises himself — by how many _buckets_ of sweat he is capable of shedding off. The first meal they have together is tense and largely silent, with him nervously looking around the restaurant and just being paranoid to shit that they are going to get shanked — or get their feelings hurt — at any moment. He’s preparing and expecting for someone to come up and spit in his face. Drogo is not at all used to being looked at like this among his people. He is kind of wigging out.

He has also forgotten that Dany speaks Dothraki. She strategically refrains from speaking it with him. But he hears her accent when she says food words.

 

 

  
As predicted, all of his sisters are awkward around Dany, but polite. His mom is not openly hostile, but his mom is very cold. Their mom also did not learn the Common Tongue, so all conversations with her has to be in Dothraki. He forgot to tell his mom that Dany understands and can speak their language — because he forgot himself. His mom is already halfway through this angry statement to his sisters at dinner. She’s offended that Dany is picking at her food and isn’t stuffing her face with their food. Their mom is stating that Dany looks frail and weak. His mom actually means that Dany will never give him half-breed children and that their family line is really fucking doomed because this woman has tricked her son with her white vagina.

He quickly shushes his mom, who looks at him like she wants to slap him in the face. He tells his mom that Dany speaks Dothraki.

“No way,” says Zazzi. “Why did you learn?”

“My ex was Dothraki,” Dany says.

“Oh,” says Nessi. “So you have a Dothraki fetish.”

“Yeah,” Dany says. “Two people make it a fetish.”

 

 

  
Dany hangs out with her psychopath brother all the time, so a bunch of really resentful and antagonistic Dothraki really isn’t a thing. She continues to be resolutely herself. Drogo continues to realize that he wishes Dany would tone it the fuck down and play the game to keep the fucking peace sometimes. He already knows that Dany is not at all like that. Be sometimes he wishes she would be.

Dany doesn’t modify to make other people more comfortable in their flaws and weaknesses. She has already gone through all of that when she was younger. She was already someone’s dutiful daughter, someone’s obedient sister, and someone’s almost-wife. She already did all of the right things — and it was all fucking _terrible,_ and he _died_ anyway. So now, she does not change.

They end up bickering and fighting before bed. She wanted to stay in a hotel. He told her his mom would freak out and think Dany was snobby and thought she was too good for them — if Dany stayed in a hotel. So Dany relented and was like, okay, so she’ll stay at Drogo’s mom’s place so that Drogo would fucking stop actively being this fucking pussy about _everything_ having to do with his mom.

Dany finds his excessive adoration of his mom and his general acquiescence to all the things his mom wants to be _disgusting._ It kills all sexual attraction she has to him, and it’s only through this belief that they can probably weather through this — that she is putting up with this. She believes that back in King’s Landing, her skin will stop fucking crawling whenever Drogo touches her.

His mom has a real problem with them staying in the same room. Drogo easily relented and planned on just saying goodnight to Dany before he goes off to breastfeed from his mommy for the rest of the night.

He quietly says, “What the fuck, Dany?” when she says that to him. Then he says, “You can try harder to get along with her.”

She says, “Oh, are you going to go up to your mom and give her this same talk? Are you going to tell her that she can try harder to get along _with me?”_ She looks at him unimpressed, because she knows he’s not going to be doing that. She says, “I get it. Shit rolls downhill. I’m like, third tier.”

“Yeah,” Drogo says sarcastically. “Your rich Targaryen ass is fucking _third tier.”_ And then he says, “You get so much _props_ and so much _credit_ out there in the _rest of the fucking world,_ and you can’t just eat it here for like, two days? I have to fucking _constantly_ eat _shit_ in King’s Landing —”

“Actually, you _don’t,”_ she interjects. “When was the last time you had to eat shit? Was it some situation where you wanted to do something impractical and someone told you, ‘Hey, maybe not do that because it wastes people’s time and money.’ And you’re like, ‘Fuck you. How dare you mess with my work!’” She rolls her eyes. “Is that how you eat shit, Drogo? I’ve been watching you just jump through a million of your mom’s hoops, and I am listening to you tell me to do this bullshit, too. She’s not _my mother,_ Drogo.”

“She’s old,” Drogo says coldly. “She’s had a hard life and was constantly beaten half to death while she protected her kids. I owe her everything. But I’m sorry she’s not Western and progressive enough for you. I’m sorry she’s so fucking _Dothraki,_ Dany.”

“Oh, right, ‘cause I’m racist, and I’m mean to you because you’re Dothraki. Why do you even put up with such racism all the time, Drogo?”

“Okay,” he says, raising up his hand with his fingers splayed out, kind of like he’s trying to physically put all of this on hold. He says, “Let’s put a pause on this. I want to yell a bunch of shit at you, but I can’t be fucking yelling in the middle of my mom’s house.” He sighs. He shakes his head. And then he walks over to give her a quick kiss. He puts his fingers into her hair and he says, “Night, babe, you fucking asshole. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” she says — kind of glaring at him, also relentingly a little. She kisses him back. She says, “Have a good sleep with your mommy.”

“You can make all the jokes you want about me wanting to fuck my mom,” Drogo says, at the door to the bedroom. “I don’t care. She was actually super hot when she was younger. Why do you think my dad hit it? It’s not because she’s a great conversationalist.”

This makes Dany suddenly burst out laughing.

 

 

  
Missy feels disappointed and let down when she just gets a super casual text from him informing her that he is still alive. When she gets the text, she realizes how much she had been looking forward to hearing his voice in her ear again. When she gets the text, she realizes how deep into this she must be.

She doesn’t even bother with a cute quip. She just texts him back and tells him that she’s glad he’s okay. And then she generally wonders _what the fuck_ she is doing with her _life_ and with _this guy,_ before she goes back to the board game she’s playing with her family.

 

 

 


	36. Grey sucks at relationships

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chap, there is a lot of sibling bonding and loyalty. And then there is Grey, an orphan who does not even know how to not be alone.

 

 

 

For her second day there, Dany generally gets benignly ignored by Drogo’s mom. Dany generally sits around on the couch and waits for time to pass as the TV drones on in the background. Drogo’s mom does not understand why the woman her son is seeing cannot stay longer than just a weekend. Drogo’s mom does not understand why this woman refuses to eat their food. Drogo’s mom does not understand why this woman exhibits no curiosity for them and where Drogo comes from at all. Drogo’s mom knows that she’s uneducated, simple, and uncultured, but she thinks there is still something to be said for basic respect. Drogo’s mom does not expect an outsider to know their customs, but the woman her son is seeing did not even greet them or thank them for their hospitality.

On her end, Dany sees Drogo’s mom as conservative and very old-fashioned, but it’s neither concerning nor bothersome to her. She already wasted years learning a language and trying to respect a culture in order to be deemed worthy of a man. Such things are always designed as lose-lose propositions for women. In many ways, Dany has to contend with the same issue when she is among the most rigid of Valyrians. Blind cultural adherence in the name of tradition is not at all her jam. But she does understand why people who are mentally weak like it and why people cling on so hard.

Dany thinks she’s doing enough with Drogo’s family. She’s been bored out of her fucking mind over the course of the entire weekend. She does not care about the things that Drogo’s family cares about. She does not like to listen to petty gossip. She does not like a lack of efficiency in communication. She does not like meandering stories. But she has put up with it all for his sake. She also has done very little work. She could have easily locked herself down and away and gotten some meetings in while she is visiting, but she chose not to do that.

Pretty much all of Drogo’s sisters except for maybe Sona, think that Dany is a real bitch. This is fine with Dany. She really cannot dispute this nor does she want to. Farra, Drogo’s second youngest sister, was extremely put off when she talked about how awesome, amazing, and talented her brother is — and Dany dryly said that Drogo’s just okay, merely adequate. It was a joke, but Dany’s sense of humor is not translating well here at all. Dany is generally trying to keep her own anger and bitterness at bay. Their standards for excellence are low. Between the two of them, Dany is more impressive professionally, but all his family can do is exalt Drogo in a really vague way and focus on Dany’s lack of adherence to traditional gender roles. The youngest and the eldest of Drogo’s sisters, Nessi and Sona, are pretty career-driven and this is something Dany understands. However, when she makes small talk with the middle two, with Farra and Zazzi and asks them about their lives, all she hears them talk about are their children and husbands. When she corrects them and expresses interest in them specifically, when she asks them to answer the question again — they are so pissed at her.

Drogo’s sisters pretty much hate that Dany treats family like it’s a dirty word. They do not know about Dany’s own loyalty to her own shitty brother, because Dany is very stingy with life details, so they just have to take Dany at face value when she tells them that she is uninterested in marriage because what is in it for her? Dany says, “Security? No, I already _have that._ Money? No, I already have that. Power? No, I _own_ that.” Dany says, “What does a man even add to my life?”

Drogo is like, sitting right there, slouched in an armchair. All of his sisters are actually tense as fuck. Nessi has actually been really sweet on him because she feels so defensive and so protective of him. Nessi is now realizing what Sona already knows — her brother is in a fucking abusive relationship. With hostility, she says, “Why are you even with my brother, then? If he is so terrible and mediocre?”

Dany shrugs. She says, “He’s convenient. He’s _there.”_ She is saying all of these things to make a point. She counterintuitively knows that her point is not landing at all, but it does not matter because this needs to be said.

Drogo reaches out and immediately clamps his hand down on Nessi’s forearm. He doesn’t think she’ll actually take a swing at Dany, but he also didn’t think she’d slam her hand right into Grey’s face. He says, “Sometimes I’m funny. Sometimes I kind of entertain you.”

Dany has to suppress her smile. She glances at him. She says, “Sometimes you accidentally say things that are kind of interesting.”

 

 

  
He drives her to the airport on Sunday night. No one says bye to Dany except for Sona. He’s had no alone time with her in a while — and they get to the airport a little bit early on purpose. He parks the car in the cell phone lot so that he can talk to her before she leaves.

He reaches out to hold her face in both of his hands. He looks into her face through the darkness in the car, and he thinks that she is such a fucking difficult person — on purpose. He thinks that she always makes him feel so awful — on purpose. He thinks that he constantly wonders if whether what they have is really damaging and abusive — or if the rest of the world just doesn’t fucking get it, and it’s actually the realest and truest thing he’s ever had with a woman. He says, “This weekend actually went worse than I thought it would.”

“This weekend actually went better than I thought it would, on my end.”

He laughs softly. He says, “What?”

“I honestly thought that you’d handle it really badly,” she says, chuckling a little bit. “I thought you’d crumble under the scrutiny and would break up with me on the spot and that I’d have to leave early.”

“For real?”

“Yeah.”

 

 

  
He holds onto her face as he slowly pulls her in for a kiss. He feels her pressing her hand to his cheek before she finds his mouth with hers. The kiss is soft and careful — and then firm and wet and audible.

With his forehead pressed to hers, he softly says, “Thanks for meeting my mom and coming to my hometown. I really appreciate it.” He appreciates that, as uncomfortable and tense as it all was, Dany still was steadfastly present. Maybe that’s the best he can hope for.

“You’re welcome,” she says, her hand drifting down to clasp a few of his fingers. “It was a big deal. You know, I haven’t met anyone’s mom in like, fifteen years?”

 

 

  
For the rest of the holiday break, his mom generally badmouths Dany and passive aggressively suggests that Drogo drop her. Drogo generally ignores his mom because she is cranky and nothing he says really changes how she feels, just like how nothing she says really changes how he feels. He understands where his mom is coming from, though.

However, there is one point during dinner in which his mom says that she does not like who he has become, because of _that woman._ He thinks that Dany’s race, her cultural background, her snobbery and elitism, her shitty diet, her inability to smile to make people feel better — he thinks those things are totally fair game. But he will _not_ give Dany credit for the change that has happened in him. He tells his mom that he is who he is because it’s who he is choosing to be. No one is tricking him into this. No one has manipulated him into this. This is just something that happens to people sometimes. Sometimes they change.

 

 

  
Mars notices how frequently Missy checks her phone. There’s a quality to her jumpiness, whenever a device buzzes in their vicinity. He sees the quick ascent of hope when her phone vibrates. He watches her pause and hold herself back before she flips the screen over. And then he sees the plummet when his sister realizes that it’s not who she thinks it is.

When Mars first makes this observation to her, she is defensive and a dork about it. She lies and tells him that it’s work stuff. He knows this person deeply because she is his blood, so he knows that it’s not work.

He hands her a cup of hot cocoa on the porch of the cabin they are renting. He holds up a fairly small bottle of whiskey, lightly shaking it, smiling at her. Wordlessly, she nods and holds her cup of cocoa out for him to pour a little alcohol into it.

Mars sees his own breath manifest in small puffy clouds as he says to her, “You know, you can’t fuck someone into loving you.”

She tenses up. Her lips push into a thin line as she generally stops herself from exhibiting her feelings so transparently. She stops herself from snapping at him, and she reminds herself that he just says what he says and he does what he does because he cares about her and he is protective of her. She says, “I don’t think that’s what I’m doing. I think I have both of my eyes wide open.” She lowers her voice and she says, “I don’t think you give me enough credit.”

He says, “I still don’t see why it’s so horrible of me to want better for you. Don’t you think you deserve someone who shows up for you? Don’t you think you deserve someone who kisses the ground that you walk on?” He shrugs out his exasperation, because she is always resenting him for wanting to protect her. He says, “Take it from me, an asshole who has had a terrible time showing up for all the good women in his life. Is it so bad that I want you to have _so much better?_ Right _now?”_

He looks far into the distance, at the mountains and the trees and the quiet seclusion, and he thinks that his dad’s mind would be completely fucking blown if his dad were alive — to see all of this. Their parents never saw snow. Mars has these memories of their dad. Their dad was a dreamer and a poet and an artist — born in the wrong country and the wrong time. That man dreamt that he could one day save up enough money to take his family on an airplane and go to a mountain to see snow.

She brushes some snow off the railing and she puts her steaming cup of cocoa down on a bare space — because she’s freeing up her hands so that she can wipe her eyes. She’s crying because this always makes her cry. Dredging up the past always makes the pain hurt with such immediacy. She can’t really muster up the words to absolve Mars of his guilt. Part of her doesn’t think she should. Another part of her just loves him so much because he’s the only person she has left that directly connects her to their parents and their brothers.

Mars sounds tortured and his voice is tight nearly silent, as he says, “Did I teach you this?” He releases another breath and he clarifies. He says, “Did I teach you to accept less than _everything_ you deserve?”

“Maybe,” she whispers, sniffing loudly. “I don’t know. Maybe Mom and Dad taught me this. With their general absence. Maybe I would’ve learned this lesson anyway, no matter what.”

 _“Forget_ him,” Mars says — just being explicit and very blunt now. “Move on from him. Stop wasting _your tears_ on him. _Please believe me_ when I say this — because I am someone who left behind women who loved me and who kept hanging onto the stupid belief that I could be _better._ You all _wasted_ your time with me. And back then, I didn’t even give _one shit_ about any of it because I only cared about _myself.”_

He’s getting a little emotional, too. He reaches up to swipe at his eyes real quickly, as he fights to regain his composure.

Then he says, “I love you so much. I couldn’t let you go for your own good because I was selfish, and I loved you _so much._ I was really _bad_ at taking care of you when you were a kid. And I look at who you are now, and I don’t know how I even got so _lucky._ I _need_ for you to be okay.”

He means that he cannot watch her dip down into an unhealthy weight again, an injury sustained on really unhealthy habits. He also means that he does not want to keep watching her pain and her sadness anymore.

“I’m okay _now.”_ She says it softly and carefully.

Mars clears his throat. He straightens his posture, and he loudly coughs into his fist. He says, “I don’t like him.”

“I know,” she says, clearing her own throat. “I love him, though.”

“You can learn to love someone else. Trust me. I’ve _done it.”_

“Mars,” she says, lightly laughing now. “I really appreciate the wealth of life experience you are bringing to this — I really do. You’re the best. But I don’t want to love someone else. I don’t want to just . . . go off and try to meet someone new and make myself feel another way.”

He sighs. And then he opens his mouth and loudly says, “I don’t _get it!”_ exploding in sound. “He’s _weird!_ He barely _talks!_ What the fuck is it about this motherfucker! Is he a fucking _wizard?_ Did he put a fucking _spell_ on you?” And then he starts chuckling kind of deliriously. “Is he like, really good in bed? Like, there are other guys who will do whatever weird shit you like in bed, Miss.”

“Oh my God,” she says, shaking her head at her brother. “It’s definitely the wizard thing.”

 

 

  
Grey’s flight gets delayed due to inclement weather and he has to stay back in the Summer Isles for an extra day. This bums Drogo out inordinately — or maybe it’s pretty normal — but Drogo seems distraught when he reads his work email and learns that he has to wait an extra day to see Grey.  
  
So much has happened in his life that Drogo actually has completely forgotten that he and Missy are beefing. That’s generally how he works — he’s mad until he’s not mad. So when he sees her again for the first time in two weeks, he scares the shit out of her by going, “Ahh! It’s so good to see you again! How was your trip!” and then he grabs her and hugs the shit out of her.

She goes rigid in his arms because — maybe this is some trap! She was prepared to get more of his anger and more of the tense looks.

Drogo feels her go stick-like in his arms, and it confuses him for the slow second it takes him to remember that they are actually in a fight. He carefully drops her back down to the ground. He says, “Sorry.” He actually means that he’s sorry for being unpredictable and for scaring the shit out of her.

But she’s also had an emotional few days, what with her brother just being sweet and annoying and constantly breaking open old wounds. He’s been bringing up their dead parents and their dead siblings a lot lately. Mars has been trying to speculate what life would look like had everyone lived. Because Missy has had a bit of a rough time lately, she pretends that Drogo’s sorry also refers to their fight and all of the shitty things that were said. And she eagerly goes, “It’s okay,” with her face so open and clear and vulnerable.

 

 

  
As she methodically breaks apart her meatballs into smaller pieces, distributing them across her plate of spaetzle, she tells Drogo about her near-death experience with a snowmobile because, as he knows, she has bad reflexes when she’s in a panic. She almost hit a tree and stuff. She talks with her hands and she mimes her snowmobile with her fist, and she nearly crashes her fist into her full glass of water. She tells Drogo it was scary like that.

He watches her talk with a smile on his face. She’s buried in a schlubby knit sweater and these squeaky rain boots. He thinks that sometimes, she’s heartbreakingly cute.

 

 

  
The storm created a bit of a backlog, and he wanted to get on the first plane out of the Summer Isles — so he slept in the airport in order to be within harassment distance of gate agents. He had to spend twelve restless hours dragging his heavy shit around, trying to get back home to King’s Landing. He asked to be upgraded. He offered to pay whatever the fuck they needed him to pay so he can get home. They kept telling him — really politely — to basically simmer the fuck down and that he’s not special. He will get to leave when it’s safe and when everyone else leaves. Everyone has to wait their turn.

He watched a bunch of shitty movies on the plane. He hasn’t showered in probably fucking three days. He hightails it straight to the office after he lands. Adrenaline is keeping him from collapsing due to sleep deprivation and jet lag. He over-tips the cab driver, and he drags his shit up and over the curb. He drags his equipment and his suitcase through the small lobby and into the elevator.

 

 

  
It’s ten o’clock when Grey spontaneously shows up — and he does not look great. He hasn’t shaved, and he’s still dressed in really light summer clothes even though it’s frigid outside. When Osha sees him — because her desk is closest to the door, she says, “Holy cow, go _home_ and take care of _this.”_ She’s gesturing up and down his body with her hand.

“I’m just gonna be here for a few hours,” he assures her, blowing past her, dragging his stuff into his office.

 

 

  
He’s full of lies. He ends up staying the entire day, sucking down cup after cup of coffee. He’s concerned with deadlines and with shafting his staff because he couldn’t show up to work on time. He’s being really crazy and overly hard on himself, as he tries to pay penance for a slight that no one is even holding against him.

“You smell like cumin,” Missandei says, standing about a foot and a half away from him. He can’t look at her directly because she looks really clean, smells awesome, and is really pretty.

“Babe,” Drogo says. “That’s BO you’re smelling. That’s _body odor.”_

 

 

  
Drogo can’t drive Grey home because Drogo has to run off and meet Dany. So she offers to take him home. She has to. He’s really unsteady on his feet, and he just _might die_  by getting hit by a train if she lets him find his own way home.

She tries to take some of his equipment for him, to lighten his load — but he clenches onto his handles tightly and he doesn’t let her. She doesn’t understand why — whether it’s chivalry because he’s a man, whether it’s because he doesn’t trust anyone but himself to hold his stuff, or whether it’s some other reason she just isn’t aware of.

She lets him keep his stuff. She generally does not tell him she has missed him. She generally does not ask him why he didn’t call her at all. She reminds herself that he never promised he would. She reminds herself that he didn’t promise her anything at all.

She rolls her head around a few times at a stoplight, trying to crack her neck.

He asks, “How was your break?”

 

 

  
She intends to just drop him off curbside at his apartment building — because he seems really exhausted and he’s been exceptionally quiet. But then he asks her if she wants to come up for a bit.

 

 

  
Their clothes and his equipment starts dropping once they get past his front door. He’s sleepy and physically exhausted, but he can definitely muster up the energy for _this._

And then, in his bed, on his hands and knees, looming over her, he tells her that he’s sorry that he smells. He runs his hand in between her bare legs. He listens for the moment her breath hitches. He parts her. She is wet and hot. He runs slow circles over her, as he leans down to kiss her.

She laughs kind of nervously. Her breathing is shallow. She says, “I think you smell great. Honestly.”

 

 

  
After she orgasms for the second time, and after he orgasms for the first time, he collapses down onto his mattress, physically spent and probably on the brink of a coma.

He doesn’t realize he has fallen asleep until he jolts awake again, hearing the sound of her moving around as she gathers her clothes and starts dressing herself again. He runs his hand over his head in confusion. He says, “You’re leaving?”

“Ah,” she says, as she pulls on her panties. “You should get some rest.”

“What time is it?”

“It’s eight.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“You should set an alarm,” she says. “Um, otherwise you might sleep through the entire day tomorrow. Then you’ll _really_ be pissed at yourself.”

“Oh, good call.”

He’s tempted to ask her to stay. He’s tempted to say that they can sleep together — like, actual sleeping. But then he realizes that it’s eight o’clock and only old people and babies are sleeping at this hour. He doesn’t want to make her feel obligated to stay over. So he doesn’t say anything at all.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she says.

“Bye, Missandei.”

 

 

 


	37. Friends with benefits

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Missandei wonders when people will just let her bang in peace. Grey wonders why everyone except Missandei are such bitches.

 

 

  
They fall into a pattern. Once every few days, she goes over to his apartment, they have sex together, and then she goes home. Though they have not discussed it explicitly, she always goes to his apartment because of the car situation, because she is more mobile and flexible than he is, and it’s a pain to take the subway from downtown to the south end in the late evening, when train runs are spaced further apart.

For years, she’s been telling people that she’s a relationship kind of girl. She likes monogamy, exclusivity, making dinner together, and planning out things with a partner. She has spent years self-consciously conveying to other people that she is boring, weird about her body, and not sexually adventurous.

Now she’s in a friends with benefits situation. It’s killer to articulate it this way to herself. She has not said it out loud to other people because she doesn’t want to listen to Obara to tell her that her brain is fucking broken, she doesn’t want to listen to Ygritte gently tell her to be careful with her heart, she does not want to listen to Drogo tell her not to fuck with Grey’s heart, she does not want to listen to her brother tell her that the man she is with should want to kiss the dirty ground her bare feet walks upon, and she does not want to listen to Yara say, “Aw, baby bear.”

She does not think she’s having a lot of sex with him because she hates herself. That is not really what this feels like. She’s pretty sure she’s not walking out of his apartment on wobbly legs and a sore clit with a pervasive sense of shame. She’s pretty sure she’s not clutching onto him tightly and telling him that she is dying without the sustenance of his love.

She’s pretty sure a big reason why she’s having a lot of sex with him is because sex feels good, and the sex that they have been having is _really fucking great._

“So it’s better than before,” Dany says, twirling her pasta around a fork. Missandei is currently talking to the one person in the world who doesn’t view her as a parable, a sad sack of a woman who is flying too close to the sun in her wax wings. “How come it’s better than before? Did you guys both take a class or something?” Dany pauses — and upon seeing the blank look on Missy’s face, she explains her joke. She dryly says, “Because you are both nerds who learn by reading things.”

Missy shrugs. “I don’t know why it’s better than before. I think part of it is the zero fucks I am giving. Part of it is that he’s so fucking hot now.”

“Now and not before?”

“It’s different now. It doesn’t like, go by so fast like it did before. Like, he takes the time to see the sights and stuff now. And to be fair to me, I’ve been letting him.” Missandei pauses. “The more I talk about this, the more I realize that I am the hero of my own story.”

 

 

  
Dany says that sex with Drogo is fine. It continues to be pretty nice. She appreciates the opportunity to be physically close to him because he seems to be a person that really needs that, and she likes sex a lot, too.

Dany says that Drogo sometimes gets choked by his own excessive masculinity and manliness sometimes. Like, sometimes he slaps her ass and asks her some variation of whether his dick is just changing her life. And it’s like, hard for Dany to not say something really mean to him in those moments because he is fucking ridiculous. So sometimes stuff gets weird, depending on how she responds to him. Sometimes he thinks he’s really great, and he’s actually not. Sometimes he feels so easily defeated and discouraged by her honesty that he kind of sulks and actually withholds sex a little bit. And she is like, oh, so this is happening? Okay. And she leaves him alone to work out his shit. She probably doesn’t do what he wants her to do or what other women have done for him — which is stay and reassure him that his penis is the _very best._

“Sounds like you guys need to talk,” Missy says, frowning.

“Oh, we definitely need to talk,” Dany says. “But it’s hard for me to be vulnerable in front of him. It’s hard for him to be vulnerable in front of me. We usually end up fighting when we try to talk.”

 

 

  
The line between what she can preach to her nieces and her own hypocrisy continues to blur, but just like with her naked pictures, Missandei really feels like the way she’s been doing things is different from how her trainwreck of a niece is doing things.

Sarah and Russ finally break up for good due to infidelity issues and the fact that he’s going off to college soon. Sarah is pretty okay with everything because she has a new boy to be obsessed over. He’s in her literature class, and he also has one white parent and one Black parent, so they have talked a lot about that. He has this working social justice vocabulary and talking points around his own Black identity.

Sarah is smitten and is changing everything about herself in response to this guy. Because Sarah’s mom lacks expertise in this area, Sarah asks her auntie if there’s any way to reverse relaxed hair. Missandei is like, “No, there’s not. You have to cut it off and let it grow out.” Missandei tells her niece that it took years upon years upon _years_ for Missandei to get her hair looking the way it does. Missandei is trying to make the point that unless Sarah plans to commit to this new guy for _years_ already, there’s no real point in changing her hair for some guy.

Deaf ears. Complete deaf ears.

But the makeup goes away. The jewelry gradually fades. More of her skin gets covered. New conversation topics like youth incarceration crop up at dinner, with Sarah regurgitating paraphrased stuff she has heard. And Missandei and Mars think this is good — this is a good change. But it’s worrisome that it’s all because of a boy. What if Sarah gets a crush on a white gun-toting conservative next? What happens _then?_

 

 

  
At this juncture in his life, all of his boys are shacked up and in serious relationships. Tyrion is married with a family. Jaime is doing . . . whatever with Brienne. Drogo is with Dany. Grey is resolutely alone. It is a complete one-eighty from seven years ago, when he was with Missandei and the rest of them were annoyed and all bitchy about his lack of availability, his desire to go to bed at a reasonable hour, and his general lameness.

On group text, Tyrion is like: _Dinner party my place, assholes. Wine. Food. Our bitches. This weekend?_

Jaime chimes in a second later and is like: _Unsubscribe_

Drogo says: _I need tons more notice. Daenerys and her schedule are a bitch. She prob can’t come._

Tyrion is like: _Already put this in her cal with her assistant. Ur welcome._

Then Jaime, who had apparently been texting Brienne in a side convo, is like: _We’re down. What should we bring? Also, babysitter?_

Tyrion writes: _Flowers. And Sansa’s mom. Flowers are for mom._

Grey’s phone is blowing up in the middle of the work day, when he’s in the staff meeting. Funnily enough, Drogo is in the same staff meeting, and Grey can actually watch Drogo not give a fuck. Drogo is snickering silently as he reads the text messages, responds with enthusiastic typing, and generally ignores Pyp, who is going over the status of projects.

Probably a dozen messages in a row pop in asking Grey to chime in, asking him to chime in with his availability _right away,_ asking him if he’s going to be bringing Missandei or not, asking him if eight place settings should be put down. Sansa needs to know. Sansa needs to know _right now!_ They are text screaming out his name because Drogo told group chat that they are in a meeting right now, and Grey’s phone buzzes every time a new text comes through, and it’s really disruptive and distracting. All of this happens in a matter of seconds.

“Hey, Pyp,” Missandei says from her seat. “Sorry, can you hold on for one second?” And then, turning to Grey, she says, “Can you please turn off your phone or put it on silent?”

Drogo is cracking up — audibly. Missandei doesn’t even want to bother with questions about what the fuck they are doing because she doesn’t care. She just wants this rudeness to stop. She just stares at him.

Grey feels like a real turd, and this is embarrassing because this is the kind of shit that he gets on the kids’ asses about all the time. He picks his phone up, sees that he has fifty-six messages to read, and then puts the phone on silent. He says, “Sorry.”

 

 

  
Grey tries to bring Yara to the dinner party, but when she learns it’s a party in suburban King’s Landing with a bunch of boring couples, she says no thank you. She tells him to hit her up when he’s actually doing something fun.

So he shows up alone. Sansa and Tyrion actually just assumed he was bringing Missandei, so when he doesn’t, Tyrion says, “What is wrong with you?” as he pulls a plate off of the table. Tyrion says, “I put in a leaf for you.” He means that he extended his dining room table because he thought eight people were coming, and it took a whopping ten minutes.

 

 

  
Throughout the night, he is largely silent because he’s tired from a long week. They’ve been having a hard time nailing down a bunch of interviews for a short film because the kids they’re supposed to be taping are a bunch of flighty motherfuckers. At least this is what Lommy says. And Grey had to stop himself from telling Lommy to stop being such a fucking joke if he wants to stay employed. Missandei hates it when he talks to the kids like that, so he stopped himself from saying that to Lommy. The looming deadline for the first pass is still fraying his nerves.

And sometimes Grey’s just ultra introverted and not very social — for no reason other than it feels natural to him.

This annoys everyone except for Dany, Sansa, and Brienne. This basically annoys his asshole friends because they are all very extroverted and live on listening to themselves talk. Because Grey is annoying them so much, they pick on him, mock him, and generally try really hard to hurt his feelings as Brienne and Sansa try to get them to stop because — as Sansa says — they are fucking making dinner unpleasant between the long discussions of whether or not Dany is racist and the long discussions about stuff that comes out of Grey’s butt.

“I’m having _a lot_ of fun,” Jaime says to his sister-in-law. “And it was a simple question.” With a straight face, Jaime turns his attention back to Grey and he says, “When you shit in the morning, are there any twigs or leaves in your poo? I’m concerned. I want to know if that stick up your ass needs medical attention. Maybe you need surgery to extract it.”

Grey is not engaging. He’s tired, and he’s actually really pissed at this point. So he just sits there eating his food, and just not saying anything. It drives his friends _nuts._

“Like, why the fuck wouldn’t you RSVP like a fucking normal person?” Tyrion says, sounding hostile and aggressive now. “Like, you had ample opportunity to be like, ‘Just me!’ and you never said shit.”

“Tyrion —” says Sansa, putting her hand on his arm. She’s trying to get him to stop.

“Like, Sansa was worried there wouldn’t be enough food and went nutty over making food for eight people, comfortably. And now we’re learning that she just stressed out kind of needlessly. Like, what is that?”

“I was going to stress out anyway,” Sansa says, directly to Grey, trying to smooth things over. “I stress out with this kind of thing no matter what. It’s not a big deal.”

“What is with this silent treatment?” Jaime says. “What is with this lack of engagement? I get that you’re upset with us. But you don’t even want to work through it at all.”

“What is there to work through?” Grey finally says, with his arms crossed over his chest and his breathing controlled. He actually wants to bounce the fuck on out of this bogus dinner. “I said I was sorry. I said it was an oversight because I was busy and I wasn’t paying attention. You’re all fucking blowing it out of proportion. What am I supposed to say to all of this?”

“Why the fuck are you so moody!” Tyrion shouts. “You just came and brought your shitty attitude!”

“Tyrion!” Sansa shouts. _“Stop it!”_

 

 

  
Brienne, and Sansa try to make him feel better about things. Brienne tells him that he really got a fair bit of heat and a lot of it was overblown. Sansa tells him that Tyrion is a real dick sometimes — and she’s sorry. She tells him Tyrion has been stressed out at work and with some family stuff — but that does not excuse him for being a real dick. Brienne repeats the same thing — that Jaime is a real asshole and Jaime often just parrots whatever Tyrion is saying because sometimes Jaime does not have thoughts of his own. Brienne says she’s sorry that he was basically bullied all throughout dinner. She says, “It was pretty uncomfortable to watch.”

 

 

  
Drogo and Dany offer to drive him home, but he is done with social interaction, so he tells them he would really rather take the train home.

Before he goes underground, he texts her and he asks her what she’s up to. Real quick, because he just doesn’t even give a fuck anymore, he tells her that if she’s not tied up with anything, she should come over. After he sends that message, he dips underground and loses reception.

When he surfaces again, about five blocks away from his apartment, she has responded.

 

 

  
After she arrives, he pulls her to his couch, sits her down, pulls off her pants and her underwear, and he starts eating her out without much preamble. He just listens the shift in her breathing — how it speeds up, how she pants, how she mutters out expletives along with his name. He just focuses on how she tastes, how wet she is, the way her body grinds against his mouth, the way her thighs clench, the dirty, sexy sounds that are coming out of her as he slips a finger inside of her, keeping it shallow, crooking it and touching the back wall behind her clit.

She whines out, “Oh my _God,”_ as she involuntarily convulses forward a little bit. She grabs onto his head for balance. “A little bit more, baby,” she forces out. “Just a little bit harder — inside. Just up and down. _Damn.”_

 

 

  
He fucks her kind of angry and rough on the couch — just a lot of quick slamming as she digs her nails into his leather, whimpering loudly, and as his hands hold onto her ass. It’s over quickly, and he’s sweaty and exhausted when he’s done. He hears her groan as he pulls out of her and walks off to go dispose of the condom.

When he gets back to her, she manages to make him feel terrible, but he knows she’s making a joke. She laughs and says, “Well, that was really romantic.” She’s still sitting naked on his couch, which is now smeared with a lot of sex fluid — mostly hers. He’s gonna have to clean that. He’s actually standing _naked_ in front of her. She says, “Do you wanna talk about it?”

 

 

  
She presses him to at least give her a hint as to why he’s in such a mood. She says to him that if he doesn’t just tell her, she’ll just think that he’s actually mad at _her._

He doesn’t want her to think that he’s mad at her because he’s not. So he shrugs and tells her that his friends are fucking annoying sometimes. They are currently annoying him. But no big deal. He’ll get over it.

She is like, so impressed by his verbosity. He can tell. She says, “Well, that sounds rough. It’s hard to fight with friends sometimes because you’re so close, and you know the things to say that will hurt the most.” And then she gets up and starts gathering her clothes. This is an image of her that has become really, really familiar to him — her leaving him. He still does not even fucking know what they are doing. He does not know how they have gotten to this point. It seems altogether very strange to him, that he is engaging in this kind of sex-only relationship with the person that inspired such insecurity and fear inside of him.

She kisses him on the cheek at the door. She says, “That was fun.” She says, “Thanks for the orgasm.” And then she stares at him, and she grabs him and shakes him a little bit. She says, “Lighten up! Oh my God! So you had a fight with your asshole friends. Do you also need to shoot yourself in the face and be all miserable when they’re not even here to watch you torture yourself? Is that even smart?”

He runs his hand down the curve of her back. He gently pulls her in for a soft hug. He concedes, and he says, “No, it actually sounds really stupid when you say it like that. Sorry.” He means that he’s sorry for making her deal with him. He nudges his nose against her cheek to get her to turn her head. When she does, he kisses her — in a for real way. He realizes that he hasn’t kissed her mouth properly at all, because he just started going down on her like a psycho when she arrived and then they fucked all demeaning with her face pointed away from him. That position makes it almost impossible to kiss.

His hand leaves his door knob so he can touch her face, as she moans, as the kiss goes inelegant, as he smears his tongue against hers.

It’s when she’s running her hand up and down his erection again, that he’s like, oh, okay. Fuck it. He has nothing going on for the rest of the night anyway. He picks her up and carries her into the bedroom. The makeout session gets broken as he drops her, as he pulls her arms from his neck. She falls backwards onto his bed with a bounce. He says, “You busy?”

She doesn’t get what he’s asking right away. Her brows knit together. She says, “Well, _yeah._ I’m like, starting to get busy with you again, right now.”

Good enough. He grins, and he snickers kind of quietly, as he starts stripping her of her clothes again.

 

 

 

 


	38. Missy turns 34

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Missy has to celebrate her nameday like she's thirteen years old, in order to recapture her lost youth. Grey continues to be pretty bad with the lady, but is good in bed. Yara is finally sick and tired of being female-bff-sounding-board to the emotionally constipated men in her life, because she has her own problems.

 

 

“Should we have a bouncy house castle?” Camille says, grinning over her potatoes and spinach. “Maybe we should have a pinata!”

“No sis, age up a little. What we need is a princess tiara, a glass Coke bottle for spin the bottle, and a closet for seven minutes in heaven! And we need to find a boombox for all of Auntie’s old school jams.”

Camille’s eyes go big and wide like saucers. And her voice goes deep and booming like a man’s voice. She says, “Yes!”

Missandei says, “Guys, no.”

They are not listening to her. This party planning came about because Missandei casually told them something that she did not think was that sad at all — but they are giving her a real fucking complex about it. She just told them that she’s never really celebrated her nameday. Her family was poor and then her parents died when she was six. And then they had bigger things to worry about than her nameday. Then she lived with Mars in a small apartment for years, and he was always on the verge of poverty and jail — he was also always working or hustling — so there wasn’t ample time or money to have a nameday party. Plus, it would’ve been really embarrassing for her to invite her friends over to their little apartment to hang out, so that’s why she never did that. And then she got older and just started working a lot and traveling constantly. Her nameday never was important or a conversation point.

Camille and Sara got their dad when he had his shit more together. And they also had their moms who always tried to make their namedays special. So they think that their auntie’s experience and her upbringing is sad _as shit._ They want to throw their auntie a big bash, to make up for all of the namedays their auntie never got to have.

Missandei says, “Guys, this is so sweet. I love you guys so much. It’s enough for me that you’re thinking of me. You don’t actually have to do this.” Missandei actually means that she does not want them to fucking do this at all, because what the fuck is she going to do? Go around inviting her _three friends_ to her nameday party and force her three friends to play spin the bottle with her in the living room of her brother’s house? This idea is only cute on paper. It will be terrible in execution.

“And cake!” Camille says excitedly, clapping her hands together. “What cake are we gonna get!”

“We need to _make_ a cake!” Sarah says adamantly. “My mom always makes me a cake on my nameday. I can ask her for her recipe, and we can adapt it for Auntie.” Sarah switches her attention to Missandei. “Auntie, what’s your favorite cake flavor?”

“I don’t really like cake,” Missandei admits.

After staring at her for a beat, Sarah switches back to her sister and says, “Okay, so I’m thinking a lot of sprinkles and a lot of candles. Like, instead of the numbers, we should actually put all thirty-four candles on this cake.”

Camille is giggling. She says, “Oh my God, that’s so many candles! We should get the ones that you can’t blow out! The ones that relight!”

“Yeah,” Missandei says sarcastically. “Let’s just burn down the fucking house with how old I am.”

They are ignoring her. Camille spontaneously grabs onto Sarah. She says, “What about an ice cream cake!”

“No!” Sarah says, kind of adamantly. “I said I was going to make Auntie a cake, and I’m serious about that!”

 

 

  
She asks him if she can come over — for sex. He texts her back and tells her fuck yes, she can definitely come over for sex. And when she arrives, she’s talking a mile a minute, griping about how long the shoot at the community center went because of consent issues — the staff kind of dropped the ball and didn’t get all the kids to sign the forms properly at all. So then they had to fucking adjust a million things so that their evening wasn’t a complete wash — but the shoot will have to be rescheduled anyway.

He doesn’t even fucking care. He doesn’t even want to talk about work. He just starts groping her body through her clothes and shoving his hand down her pants to feel her up as he kisses her.

But then he hears her stomach rumble. He has to ask her when the last time she fed herself was. She looks sheepish — and she admits to him that lunch was probably her last meal. And then she coos and starts trying to take off his pants. And then he slaps her hands off of him and he tells her, “Jesus fucking Christ, Missandei. You can’t just be fucking skipping meals,” all cranky as he starts washing his hands in his kitchen sink and pulling ingredients out of his fridge and the pantry. He doesn’t want her to get fucking crazy again — for her to start getting so wrapped up in work that she forgets to eat again.

He makes her some eggs really quickly, because of the protein. He stands around and basically looms over her as she eats it. He makes her drink a glass of milk — also for protein. She says, “Grey, you’re a bit much right now,” but she still acquiesces and downs the entire glass in a few seconds. She holds onto her stomach. She says, “Awesome. There’s a lot of dairy in me right now.” She means that she might be slightly lactose intolerant. He knows this. She says, “Okay, I’m ready to fucking _do this_ now.”

They collide into each other. He cries out a grunt as she starts giving him a really aggressive handjob. He says, “Ah, it hurts a little,” as she shoves him toward his bedroom.

She says, “Oh, it’s gonna hurt _a lot_ in a bit.”

He says, “Oh, what?”

And apparently her definition of hurt is bent. Because she yanks off his pants and then puts him into her mouth, and he is trying not to scream out loud.

 

 

  
At this point, he gives way fewer shits and he has far fewer existentialist crises about whether he is just using her body and disrespecting her as a person. Because she does shit like she makes him watch as she slides herself backwards onto his dick and then she says, “Touch it.” And his brain is like: This fucking _bitch._

And then he touches it, and she laughs as she moans, and he gets the general sense that they both kind of really like what is going on. And other than the first time — she has not told him that she loves him in a while.

 

 

  
He’s still naked and in bed as he rolls over and watches her get dressed. He watches her poke her arms through the straps of her bra. He watches as she stretches the material and pulls it over her breasts. He almost wants to say, “Aww,” and, “Bye,” out loud.

As she reaches behind her back to clip her bra, he says, “So, I got this text message with a link to a page that said something like, ‘Missandei’s Super Fun 34th Nameday Super Extravaganza.’”

She immediately shuts her eyes and suppresses a groan. She says, “How did they even get your number?”

“Probably Drogo,” Grey says. Drogo doesn’t even give a fuck about Grey’s privacy, a conversation topic they have squabbled over a lot over the years. “So you’re throwing a rager.”

“Yeah,” she says sarcastically. “A rager for me and my three friends.”

He smiles. He says, “I think you have more than three friends now. Maybe five or six at least.”

She laughs, bending down to step into her pants. “Ah, yeah. The girls are being cute, and they’re also definitely making fun of me, a little bit. They know I’ve been dealing with a lot of comments and a lot of mockery because of that page. They’re really happy.” The page has a terrible list of terrible activities. Like, disco dancing. Like — really — spin the bottle and seven minutes in heaven. Like, a pinata. Like, not having internet and getting entertained by sitting around a radio.

Like, the girls have dug real _deep_ to make it super weird and bizarre-sounding.

After buttoning her jeans, Missandei looks back up at him. She says, “Are you gonna come?”

He grins.

She clarifies. She says, “To my party, _fucker._ You’re kind of one of my five or six friends. We’re friends, right? Like, that’s allowed now, right? I’m allowed to call you that?”

He generally chooses to ignore her sass. He says, “Do you want me to come?”

“Yeah, always. But not too early or else the fun kind of has to take a detour, and we have to focus on me and my needs for a bit. Oh shit,” she says. “There I go again. I need to be better about putting myself first.”

She is rambling and deflecting because she is nervous. He realizes this halfway through her little speech. It makes him swing his legs over the edge of his bed so that he can face her fully. He repeats himself. He says, “Do you want me to come to your party?”

“Are you busy that day? Do you already have plans?”

“I can move some stuff around.”

She looks pained. She says, “Oh, if you already have plans, don’t cancel them. My thing is totally not a big deal.”

He is kind of taking this to mean that he must’ve misread her before — which happens to him a lot. He misreads situations and people a lot because he might fucking be borderline autistic — this is what Yara tells him sometimes. He thinks that he was probably wrong before and that she kind of doesn’t really want him to be there. She is probably nervous and awkward because he brought this up, and she didn’t expect for him to be invited by her nieces. He gets that she has more than five or six friends. The joke is that she has a whole shit ton of friends, because she’s really awesome and amazing and great and people just can’t help but want to be around her. So she probably has a lot to deal with on that day, and she probably does not want him to be around her family and her friends, making shit awkward with his general silence and his general inability to look like he’s capable of having a good time.

He says, “Well, okay. I hope you have fun though. I hope you have a nice time at your rager.”

 

 

  
Missandei actually had legitimate fears that only three people will show up to her party because she’s such a friendless loser, but her nieces must’ve intuited her insecurities because they have done a really excellent job of communicating and following up and keeping things hyped.

They really make her wear a tiara. They are manipulative and geniuses, and she is starting to worry less about them being out there in the big bad world by themselves. They made the tiara themselves, painstakingly gluing little rhinestones into a plastic crown. They tell her that buying one of these crowns for real costs an assload. And they didn’t have enough money saved up. But they wanted her to have one, so they have been working on it together at night with a hot glue gun after they are done with their homework and studying.

These assholes are totally fucking with her brain and her heart. She completely knows what they are doing to her. And yet, she is still completely susceptible and vulnerable to their love. She fucking wears the ridiculous crown and listens to the onslaught of commentary as guests pile into her brother’s house. Most of the commentary is actually stuff like how the crown is super cute and pretty. Like, Ygritte screams, “Oh my God! I love it!” But Missy still does not feel like this is a victory. She still feels like a real fucking dork. She is really uncomfortable with all of the attention on her.

“You are a _queen,”_ Sarah says, reaching out to touch her auntie in the middle of her chest. “Own it, Auntie.”

Missandei is like, “Oh my God.”

 

 

  
The house is jam-packed with people. Fucking _Daario_ actually flew in for this — and she didn’t expect that — so she just starts crying her face off when she sees him suddenly appear. She launches herself at him, and he’s laughing and picking her up to twirl her around, as he tells her to just fucking stop crying already. He tells her he was up north for work anyway. This is a detour on the way back home. He tells her that seeing her is convenient — trying to downplay his gesture so she’d stop being so emotional about it.

She repeats this whole thing again, when she sees Gendry, who also flew in just the night before. It’s so fucking embarrassing because she keeps crying, and people keep watching her cry as they indulgently laugh at her. She self-consciously lets Gendry go after she squeezes him tightly. She says, “I know you’re here to see Arya, too.”

He says, “I’m actually here for you.”

And then she sees Sandor. Who immediately says, “Stop! And don’t!” And then he says, “C’mere.”

 

 

  
She manages to chill the fuck out after about an hour — after she starts getting loosened with drinks. She’s so chill and pretty fucking happy — that not even Mars can get her down with his gentle affirmations and his gentle so-called reality checks. He’s holding her in a hug. He says, “Look at how many people love you. Look at all of these people who love you. You got people hopping on planes for you. You got people traveling _distances.”_ And then he says, “Where’s Grey? Doesn’t he live like, less than ten miles away?”

She realizes that Mars was probably actually the one that had his daughters invite Grey. He sounds so disappointed and frustrated. Again, she never asked him to be. She says, “Bro. You are so annoying. Let up for a day, okay? Damn. It’s _my_ day. Let me live my life! Can I please just _live for a day?”_

 

 

  
Her nieces try to enforce some party rules — and they do a pretty good job forcing people to play their party games until their dad walks over and explains to them that a lot of the people at this party have not seen each other in a while — and people just want to catch up with one another. Their dad tells them to fucking relax it on the party games with the sexual undertones.

 

 

  
Drogo expects a fight — because he always expects a fight because he’s an idiot. When Drogo sees Daario walking up to him and Dany, Drogo automatically steps out in front of her to body-block her just in case Daario has a bomb or something.

Dany shoves Drogo out of way, making him stumble right into Jaime. He’s such a fucking idiot sometimes. She smiles up at Daario, and she holds out her arms.

He dips down for the hug, easily picking her up a little bit. He says, “It’s so good to see you, Dany.” Then he puts her down. And then he kind of laughs and smiles at Drogo. He says, “It’s really great to see you too, man. You look great. You’ve bulked up some, haven’t you?”

Drogo sighs. He and Daario actually had a great rapport once upon a time, before Grey became his number one. Drogo says, “Man, diet played a huge part in that. I have an entire regimen and routine.”

 

 

  
Yara is antsy as fuck. She’s exhibiting all of the tell-tale signs of impatience. Her arms are crossed over her chest, her feet is tapping on the floor, and she keeps turning on her phone to check the time. At the beginning of this meeting, she told everyone that she has a hard stop at at the top of the hour. They are now twenty minutes past, and people keep droning on and on about every procedural detail involved in filming in the far north.

Grey puts his hand on her knee, underneath the table, to get her leg shaking under control.

 

 

  
When the meeting is finally over, Yara silently explodes in elation and also still a lot of anger because people just don’t give a fuck about other people’s time. Yara starts furiously walking out of the conference room, jamming her finger repeatedly in the elevator button as other people loiter a little bit after the meeting.

Yara assumes that he’s going to Missandei’s party because Grey and Missy are fucking each other, and Yara goes to the parties of her fuck friends all the time. So she throws her car keys at him. He has to catch her keys in stunned surprise before they hit him right in the face. She says, “You mind driving? I still gotta wrap up Missy’s present.” Yara got Missy _the best_ wirefree bra with really good support and also _the best_ period panties money can buy. She spent a good few weeks busting her brain trying to figure out what to buy Missy that Missy would not think to buy for herself. And it’s totally this shit.

Yara is impatiently clicking the door handle of her own car, as she says, “Touch the door. Touch the door. _Touch the door.”_ Her car is touch-activated. And when Grey continues to look dumbfounded and frozen in place, Yara shouts, “Touch the fucking _door_ and unlock it for me! God, Grey! What the fuck is _wrong_ with you right now!”

 

 

  
He awkwardly tries to explain to Yara that he’s not planning on going to Missandei’s party. Yara tells him there’s no fucking way she’s going to drop him off at home and then turn around to go to Missandei’s brother’s house. Yara will lose an entire fucking hour doing that.

Grey tells Yara he can just take the subway home. And she cannot believe they are arguing about this right now. She says, “What the fuck is _your deal?”_ She angrily walks around the car to snatch her keys back. She was trying to be efficient with this and have him drive because Grey wraps presents like fucking crap. But whatever. She takes back her keys and then she starts pushing and pulling him. She’s dragging his stupid, idiot, annoying ass to this fucking party because she does not even have fucking time for him to be a fucking baby about fucking everything. She gets enough of this shit all day every day from Theon.

Grey is fighting her on this, as he always does. He says, “Stop shoving me!”

She shouts, “I don’t want to fight with you right now! We’re already late! It won’t fucking kill you to do the fucking decent thing and say hello and wish her a good day!”

Okay. That stings. It stings enough that he says, “Fuck you for saying that, Yara.”

And she coldly says, “Get the fuck in the car.”

 

 

  
In her car, on the drive to Missandei’s brother’s house, they actually have a terribly emotional fight — just about everything. Grey keeps telling her that he’s not a fucking idiot or a fucking child. He does not constantly need to be handled and told what the fuck to do all the time. He’s not her fucking brother. She can’t fucking control him just because she cannot control her brother. Grey tells her that she can’t fucking control people — period.

And Yara gets all sensitive that Grey brought up her brother, because that’s been really hard for her. She’s been laboring, and she’s been trying to understand but all anyone ever says to her is that she doesn’t fucking get them. And she’s really fucking sick of that because she doesn’t think anyone fucking ever tries that hard to _get her._ So she tells Grey that he’s so fucking self-involved, and he doesn’t know shit about what she has going on with her brother. He doesn’t fucking know because he never asks. She actually starts to angrily cry over this. She’s trying to drive as she shoves her fist into her eye socket to clear up her vision — and she shouts, “God! I didn’t want to fucking do this with you!” And then she reaches behind her seat, trying to palm around for the plastic bag of underwear purchases she made for Missandei. And Yara slaps the shit into his lap. She says, “The fucking wrapping paper and tape is in there. Will you please just fucking make that look _nice_ for me?”

 

 

  
They drive in silence for about five minutes, as her tears dry up and as he quietly rustles around with paper and tape. He feels real fucking terrible and shitty as he breaks the silence and says, “So, what do you want to do with the price tags? Should I rip the tabs off?”

“No,” she says. “It’s easy enough to look up the price of this shit. Just leave them on so it’s easy for her to return if she wants to.”

“Okay,” he says. And then he says, “What’s been going on with you and your brother?”

Yara laugh is loud and humorless.

 

 

 

 


	39. Mars does not like Grey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grey shows his face at Missy's party and realizes that he has acquired a number of enemies. Mars has to work hard not to murder. Missy takes a bat to a pinata full of rocks, gets hammered.

 

 

  
Yara tells him that Theon is really depressed and sometimes it seems like Theon is on the verge of doing something drastic. Theon won’t see a therapist, and their dad constantly is asking Yara why Theon is being such a faggot about shit. And Yara has to be like, “Oh, I don’t know why, Dad. I don’t know why Theon is being such a faggot about his debilitating, life-altering injury.” Yara tells Grey that every day when she gets home, she pauses at her front door and she wonders if her brother is still alive in there. Sometimes Theon is out — like taking a walk or something — and she has to nervously make dinner and wait and see if Theon shows up. She can’t text Theon because — as everyone fucking knows — she’s really intense and overbearing, and it disgusts everyone. Terrible things have been said and exchanged between her and Theon, when she told Theon to calm the fuck down and accept a fucking text every now and then.

She laughs darkly again and she says, “It’s a lot like what just happened between us.” She says, “I like to make people resent me — because I am too awesome, and no one can fucking handle how fucking awesome I am.” It’s an old and bitter little joke. And she generally expects to be corrected and told that she needs to know her place, be humbler, and to stop saying that she is awesome.

But Grey actually says, “You are _so awesome.”_ And then he says, “Maybe I can come over sometimes and just hang out. Change up the routine a little bit. Maybe I can just distract you while you wait for him to come home. Or I can like stand there as you yell at me, so that he knows that he’s not the only one that you get angry with.”

“Grey,” she says, sighing. “That would actually be fantastic. Thank you.”

“Yeah, call me. I’ll come over.”

 

 

  
He shows her his wrap job, and it’s actually really good — especially since the bra and panties are soft and she didn’t get a box for them. She whistles out how impressed she is. She says, “Wow, that actually looks really good for once. You’re usually fucking terrible at wrapping presents.”

He says, “Yar — you like to fucking throw paper and no tape at me. And you tell me to put shit together with my spit.”

“Well, you got tape today,” she says, smoothly hooking her arm with his as they walk up to the front stoop of the house.

 

 

  
When Yara has Grey hand Missandei her present, Yara makes is super clear that beyond the wrapping, he had fucking nothing to do with the present. This amazingness is all Yara.

Missy feels shy and sheepish — because there’s a fucking princess crown on her head, she didn’t expect for him to show up at all, and she also doesn’t get presents that often. She doesn’t really know the protocol to this, so she just holds it in her hands carefully and tries to hug Yara.

“Oh, babe. You’re not gonna open it?”

“Like, right now?” Missy asks.

“Well, yeah,” Yara says. “I want to see your face when you open it.”

“Oh, God, is it going to make me cry?”

 

 

  
She does not cry when she opens the present. It actually takes her a beat to realize what it’s more than just underwear. It takes her a second to realize that it’s the fucking _best underwear ever._ Missandei screams, “Oh my God!” hopping up and down with her new underwear in her fists.

Yara is grabbing onto her, jumping up and down, too. Grey is just standing there, trying to not get in the way. Yara is saying, “I know! I know! _I know!”_

“Oh my God, I’m going to be so comfortable!” Missandei says, squealing. “I’m going to sleep so well because I won’t be worried about leaking onto my bed!”

“I know!” Yara says.

 

 

  
He actually wants to say hello to her in some sort of meaningful way. Like, he kind of wants to kiss her and tell her the fucking crown on her head is hilarious. But all of their friends are here. Her brother is giving him the death glare. Yara is impatiently waiting for him to free himself up so they can start drinking. And also, their entire office is here. All of the kids are probably like, oh ew, who invited the mean boss?

So he just reaches out to pat her on the shoulder. He says, “What’s up. Cool head gear.”

 

 

  
He inevitably runs into Missandei’s brother as he’s scavenging for food at the dining table. Grey has a paper plate in hand, and he’s trying to ignore the way Mars is stalking him. It’s weird because last he checked, he thought they were kind of on good terms. But of course it’s not weird, because Mars prob-a-bly knows Grey has been fucking Mars’ baby sister all dirty — like a lot — because Missandei and her brother are close. So, putting himself in Mars’ shoes, Grey thinks that if Grey had a little sister and if he found out she was doing stuff with a guy like what Missandei has been doing with Grey — well, he’d actually probably be fine with it because it’s _none of his fucking business_. But that is not the way that Mars thinks. So Grey just dips a meat pie into hot sauce, and he shoves it into his mouth as Mars confronts him.

“Hey, man,” Grey says through his stuffed mouth.

“Thanks for showing up,” Mars says aggressively. “Took you long enough.”

“I had a meeting.”

“So work is more important than my sister,” Mars says.

Oh, great. He’s embroiled in a conversation that he absolutely cannot win. _Great._ “It’s a huge project. People were coming in from out of the country. This has been planned for months. I pay my staff with money I get from people who give me money to do shit for them. Sometimes we have meetings to talk over what shit they need from me.” Grey shrugs, and then swallows his final bite. “So yeah, I’m a few hours late to your sister’s party.”

“Wow,” Mars says, nodding his head slowly. “So you’re real big and fancy and your time is really valuable. I get it.” Mars points a finger at Grey. He says, “I don’t _like_ you!”

“Yeah!” Grey says, in exasperation. “I can tell!”

 

 

  
He’s annoying Yara a little bit because he’s having an impossible time relaxing. He feels like his entire staff is watching him try to be a human and he doesn’t like it because if they think he’s human, then they won’t be scared of him anymore and then all of the work will fucking turn to shit and they will fucking go out of business and all be fucking poor and have to fucking live on the streets like a bunch of fucking vagrants before they start selling their bodies for drugs or shelter. He has a strong imperative to be fucking consistently ice cold.

Also — a _bunch_ of people at this party do not like him. Tyrion and Jaime still have not fucking apologized to him for fucking lighting him on fire and just letting him fucking burn for really low grade shit. He’s actually still kind of mad at them, too. Obara and Mars just switch off giving him just really aggressively violent looks. He cannot turn a corner without seeing one of them challenging him with their eyes. He can’t really do much about this — other than eat the shit out of all of Mars’ food and drink all of Mars’ fucking alcohol so that there are fewer delicious leftovers for Mars to eat for work. Like, this is the fucking _best_ Grey can currently do because he’s so fucking _handicapped_ by the fucking attendees of this party.

“Nice to see you,” Drogo says, grinning at him when he walks up to them. “We saw that conversation you had with Missandei’s brother. Couldn’t hear the sound, but the show was fucking _riveting.”_

“Yeah,” Dany says. “We were like — is he going to get hit in the face again! Is he going to break the tension with Mars by trying to make out with Mars?”

“We were like — how come this motherfucker cannot attend parties without kissing people and getting hit in the face for it? Why doesn’t he know that he should keep his lips to himself!”

“I was just legitimately worried about you,” Daario offers. “Because I don’t have a lot of the context that others do. Also, I’m a dad now, and it has made me so soft.” Daario then laughs and reaches out to hug Grey. “Hi, by the way! I haven’t seen you in forever, man! How are you!”

 

 

  
There’s really actually a pinata. It’s in the shape of a seahorse, and it’s rainbow in color. When Missandei asks the girls what they filled it up with — because adults are not really motivated by candy the way that kids are — the girls tell her that there are rocks in the pinata. Missandei laughs because she thinks they are joking. But they are not. The pinata has a bunch of small stones weighing it down. Candy is expensive. Rocks are free.

Mars tied the pinata up by taking a ladder and climbing a tree. He takes an aluminum bat out of the garage and hands it to his sister, who says, “Holy shit, you guys aren’t playing around.” There is a shot glass in front of her, because her nieces have been feeding her drinks. Because it just makes sense to make her do this drunk and to film it — instead of just spinning her around and blindfolding her.

Mars smiles down at her. He touches her warm face. He says, “You know, honestly — I think this party is a little bit for me, too. I feel like I’ve been getting a little bit of a do-over with you.”

 

 

  
When Drogo sees what is going on in the backyard — with the pinata — when he sees Camille try to balance her cell phone on a chair, Drogo walks up to her and he says, “Sweetheart, don’t worry about it. I’ve got this covered.” Drogo then grabs his keys from Dany and then goes to his car. He opens his trunk and pulls out a camera — and then another.

And then when he finds Grey and pushes the camera into Grey’s bicep, Grey is like, “Oh, shit.” He has also noticed the pinata. He says, “Well, okay then,” as he pulls the camera strap over his head.

 

 

  
When she sees Drogo and Grey holding cameras — it actually gives her this incredible pang of nostalgia — even though she sees them holding cameras all the time. It’s just different with it’s outside the context of work. She watches as Grey calls for Jojen and talks to Jojen for a moment. And then she sees Jojen nod before Jojen starts climbing the tree that the pinata is tied to. Oh. Jojen is mounting a camera there.

There’s so much heat in her face and so much dread in the pit of stomach. This is becoming an entire production. And she is like, the sad clown in the middle of it all. All of her friends and family are here. Even her work buddies from the jazz radio station are here.

 

 

  
They figure out really fast that the blindfold is too much of a hindrance. She’s drunk, so she keeps losing her footing and falling down onto the grass because she can’t see where she is walking. Camille runs over, screaming, “Auntie, don’t swing! It’s me!” before she quickly unties the scarf from around Missandei’s eyes.

Missandei groans and reluctantly pushes herself back to her unsteady feet. The fucking bat is made of metal, and it’s heavy as shit. She has a hard time with it — and Drogo is calling out these directions and these tips, and she has to say, “Shut up! Shut up, Drogo! I know how to bash an object with another object!”

Through her blurry eyes, as an insane crowd of people encouragingly watch her, she looks up into the underbelly of the pinata.

And then she takes a swing.

 

 

  
Grey watches and tries not to laugh because his mic is picking up all of the sound, as Missandei smashes the pinata with the bat. Her form is terrible and he’s scared for her wrists, but she’s really going at it with gusto and commitment. The rocks in the pinata makes it behave oddly — it has a much heavier swing than a typical pinata. It’s like Missandei is hitting a bag of sand.

And when she tears a hole in the thing, the rocks start popping out — falling on her. Her swings are occasionally interrupted as dirt and jagged rocks rain down on her. She starts kind of whimpering and asking if she can just stop now, because this is a really terrible experience — and everyone is just cracking up and telling her to keep going.

So she keeps going. She yelps when dirt gets into her eyes. And she falls back down onto the ground and covers her head in order to avoid a mini-avalanche of small rocks. Drogo is looking at Grey from across the yard, and his eyes are saying, oh my God, is this really happening?

 

 

  
Grey keeps the camera going, off and on, for the rest of the night. He records as they shut off the lights and the cake with a bazillion candles comes out. He records as she struggles to blow it all out because the candles keep relighting themselves. He records as Jaime points out that there is just so much wax and so much of Missandei’s spit on the cake now.

 

 

  
At the end of the night, Yara leaves Grey there because she figures that he probably wants to finish out Missandei’s nameday with sex. She is right, but Grey is also relieved that Yara doesn’t actually verbalize this out loud in front of everyone.

The kids are weirdly eager to get their hands on the footage he and Drogo shot. They want to know when it’s gonna be uploaded onto the server. He wants to fucking know when the fuck they are planning on cutting this shit — during work hours? While they’re not billing clients?

“We’ll do it on our breaks and during lunch, Grey,” Meera says, kind of doing a real good job at making him feel like a real fucking tool.

 

 

  
If anyone thinks it’s weird that he’s waiting until the very fucking bitter end — they do not comment on it. He says bye to a lot of people. He says bye to his staff. He says bye to Tyrion and Jaime and hugs them because he has decided he doesn’t need their fucking apologies anymore. He says bye to Daario, Dany, Drogo, Sandor, Brienne, Gendry, Arya, Ygritte, Jon, and all of the fucking rest of them. Bye for now, because they are planning to meet up again soon because of Sandor and Daario’s short visit. He watches as they all say bye to her, too. It takes _forever._

When they are finally gone, and it’s just him and her family left — he has to ask her where she wants to be — in front of her brother, who is still fucking on his fucking balls. Grey asks her, “Do you wanna go home? Do you want to stay here? Do you want water?”

He actually fucking means _actual water._ Because she’s drunk as fuck. But it’s already out of his mouth before he realizes what he’s saying.

She laughs. She says, “It’s my fucking nameday. _Yeah,_ I want water.”

 

 

  
He helps them clean up a little bit — but it actually doesn’t look too bad at all. Their guests were very considerate. He helps them move some of the furniture back to the right spots. He’s still straightening stuff up as Mars pulls together a food package for Missandei, of her cake and of some snacks from her party. This makes Grey feel kind of stupid for eating so much of the food — he thought he was screwing over Mars. He didn’t think he was screwing over Missandei.

The girls surprise the hell out of him by hugging him before they go to bed. Camille hands him a party favor and says, “Thanks for coming!” And then she explains that the gift bag has a bath bomb, a pencil, some candy, and a few baby pictures of her aunt.

 

 

  
It’s pretty fucking obvious what they are going off to do — because Missandei is drunk and fucking flagrant. She starts hanging all over him and trying to kiss him when they are finally alone — or alone enough. She says, “I can’t _wait_ to get you into  _bed,”_ with her voice all low and sultry. He holds onto her so she doesn’t fall, but he also keeps avoiding her fucking wet mouth because her brother is like, _right there._

In frustration, trying to maneuver around her, he says, “Where is all of your shit? What shit do I need to put into your car?”

“Baby, I want you to put _your shit_ into the _trunk_ of  _my car.”_

“Oh my God, shut up.”

And then he generally pulls them the fuck out of the kitchen before he gets his ass beat and sex just flies off the table because he is fucking dead.

 

 

  
Mars is not fucking amused — but it’s not like he can fucking stop this. It’s not like he can rip his sister away from the guy and lock her up. He just silently starts loading up her car with her purse, her tote, her presents, her food, her shoes, and the rest of her stuff. He just hands the keys over to Grey when he finishes. And he says, “Here you go.”

Grey takes the keys. He says, “Thanks, man.

 

 

  
He asks her where she wants to go — his place or her place? She tells him her place — because it is closer. She laughs as he drives. She tells him he’s so fucking serious. He kind of jokes with her. He tells her that he’s serious because he’s still coming down from fearing for his life — he’s still trying to come back from that. He doesn’t expect that she’s currently quick enough to pick up on the thread. She seemed largely oblivious to the tension that’s been ever-present the entire night. But she says, “Thanks for not letting it get too crazy with my brother.”

 

 

 

 


	40. Grey and Missy have a day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grey and Missy spend the day together, buys a car. Missy is super hungover.

 

 

It’s been fucking _years_ since he’s had sex with her while she is so fucking drunk — but a lot of things come back pretty fast. She keeps making him laugh, for instance. She is pretty vocal, for another. She is saying just crazy shit to him constantly. She says she wants to eat cake as they fuck — and he indulges her. He gets out of bed to pull out the container from the fridge. He starts to portion it out, but she yells at him and tells him to just bring the whole fucking thing to bed. He shakes his head at her as he generally listens. He brings her a fork, and he also fills up a big glass of water because if she’s going to fucking eat while _he has sex_ with her, she might as well also stay hydrated. Her hangover is going to be killer tomorrow regardless. But she should stay hydrated.

She’s on top. Because — again — it makes it easier for her to eat cake. She moans as she sinks back down on him, licking frosting from her fork. He finds this _way_ fucking hotter than it should be, because he cannot even fucking tell if she’s moaning for him or for the fucking cake. His wandering hands run over her body, over her ass as he helps her find a better rhythm, as he smears her all wet and tight over him, over her breasts as he cups her and runs his thumbs lightly over her nipples. She groans. And then she tries to feed him cake.

He twists his head. He says, “No thanks.”

“It’s really yummy though, baby,” she says. Her eyes fall close momentarily as she sinks back down on him. She says, _“Fuck.”_ His heart is pounding, too. She says, “Sarah baked this herself.”

“Okay, okay,” he says. “Fine.”

 

 

  
She doesn’t come before he does — they can’t sync up in that way tonight because she’s so hot, he’s so eager, and her concentration is bullshit. So after he finishes inside of her, he gets up to get rid of the condom, and then he comes back to get his face between her legs.

He watches her extra carefully because she is especially uninhibited. Her body squirms around underneath his mouth as she whimpers and moans, as she feeds his ego by telling him how fucking good he makes her feel.

He lightly bites her as she comes, his fingers digging into her thighs to hold her in place — as her sensitivity shoots up and she tries to get away from his mouth. Her face is looking down at him — twisted up and crying as she tells him, “Babe. Baby. Grey, it’s too much,” as she tries to lessen the pressure of his tongue on her clit, as she pulls herself away from his grasp. In the past — he has let her go because he was scared that he was hurting her, and he was scared of not listening to her when she told him to stop.

Tonight though, he doesn’t let her go and he doesn’t let himself do something out of fear. He keeps his mouth pressed on her through her entire orgasm. He watches her continue to cry and gasp and moan and thrash, for what feels like long, long minutes. It does not stop until she actually violently kicks him in the shoulder and pries him off of her body.

He’s aroused again. He’s sitting back on her bed. She’s got herself propped up on her elbows. Her eyes are wide, and her face is wet. And he’s waiting — to see if she’s really mad or if she was really into it.

She mutters, “You motherfucker,” as she scrambles to her hands and knees, as she pulls him by his wrist, as she pushes him so he is lying down. He’s making it super easy for her. He flips onto his back and he reaches over and starts searching around in her drawer from another condom. His hands are shaking from adrenaline as he flubs it and struggles to get it on — as she tells him to please just hurry the fuck up. He says, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! What the fuck!” just getting frustrated.

When he’s ready for her, she gets on top of him and sinks back down — really easily and smoothly. It drags this dark and guttural groan from her. He thinks that she is fucking gorgeous. She says, “You’re really gonna _get it_ now. I’m going to fuck you until you cry.”

He yanks her face down so he can kiss it.

 

 

  
“Missandei,” he says, lightly slapping her sleepy ass. “Can I stay over? Do you mind? There’s not an easy way for me to get home right now.” It’s two in the morning. The trains have stopped for the night. They don’t start running again until five in the morning.

“Yeah,” she says, rolling over and pulling back some of her blankets for him. “Of course. I’m not gonna make you spend crazy money on a cab. I’m not a monster.”

There’s a tupperware of half-finished cake and an empty water glass on her small side table. He gets up to clean up a little bit — and also to refill her water.

She’s already sleeping. After he’s done cleaning up, he shuts off the lights, and he climbs into bed with her. She immediately rolls over and cuddles against him, throwing her leg on top of him.

And it makes him tear up. Because they used to do this sort of thing together all the time. Because he used to be so in love with her. He used to just love her so fucking much that it was like he couldn’t breathe without her.

“Night, Grey,” she murmurs into his chest.

“Night.”

 

 

She has a pretty massive headache when she wakes up the next morning, but her mood is still pretty fucking fantastic because when she rolls over, she comes across his warm, naked, and unconscious body lying right next to her. She’s been drifting in and out of sleep all night, so it’s not a surprise to see him. He’s actually been waking up with her, each time asking her if she needs anything, telling her to drink the fucking water, helping to push her out of the bed with his hand on her bare ass whenever she went to go pee or to go throw up. He’s actually sleeping in later than he usually does because his sleep was constantly interrupted by her.

She rolls herself out of bed and carefully crawls to the toilet because she needs to pee — or barf again — maybe both.

“Missandei,” he calls out, his voice hollow and low because he’s still half asleep. “Are you okay?”

 

 

  
She pops a few tablets of pain medication after she flushes the toilet. She also brushes her teeth real quickly before she quietly shuffles back into the main room. She just dies a little bit inside when she sees that he’s still lying in her bed with his arm thrown over his head — he’s still trying to keep sleeping.

She slips back into bed and immediately starts nuzzling her face into his neck. He lifts his arm so she can get closer. He curls his arm around her body and cups her butt. She feels for him under the covers. She finds him semi-hard. That changes fairly quickly, as she runs her hand up and down.

Her headache is still present, and she’s still kind of nauseous. She can’t jiggle too much or she might throw up again — so this is why she rolls fully onto her back and tugs his arm, pulling on it. She reaches over to paw at the drawer of her nightstand. She digs around for another condom. She shows him the little packet. She softly says, “Come on. Get over here.”

He grunts softly. He crawls in between her legs. She helps roll the condom onto him. She doesn’t want anything more than him going in and out of her right now. It’s just that there’s a lot of nausea going on right now — her own spit makes her want to gag — but she’s never had sex with him during the daytime before. They’ve never had morning sex before. At least, not since she came back to King’s Landing.

“No no,” she says, when he dips down and tries to kiss her. “No kissing.”

He pauses, poised at her entrance. He says, “Morning breath?”

“No,” she says, smiling at him, feeling just buttery soft on him. “I’m just going to throw up if you put anything in my mouth.”

He raises his brows at that, kind of assessing what she is saying to him. And then he says, “See, this is why I didn’t want you to eat all of that fucking cake.”

“Oh, really?” she says skeptically. “You predicted that flour and sugar would give me tummy problems? You weren’t at all concerned when I drank an entire fifth?”

“No, Missandei,” he says sarcastically. “Because I’m a fucking idiot, and I don’t know how alcohol works.”

She smiles at up at him. She nudges him with her ankles against his butt. She pulls him closer. She pulls just the tip of him inside of her. She says, “Fuck me firmly but gently please.”

She gasps, and her breath gets stuck in her throat as he smoothly pushes into her. He feels full and fucking fantastic. She groans and holds onto him. And then she gags. Because air tastes _disgusting._

“Oh my God,” he says, laughing a little bit, pausing a little bit, shaking his head a little bit. “I love that you had to hold back vomit right as I entered you. That was awesome.”

 

 

  
She continues to feel like shit, even as he “rocks” her “world” by chasing his own pleasure, trying to orgasm inside of her as fast as he can because he is legitimately worried that she is going to throw up in the middle of sex. He’s trying to have sex with her as quickly and as gently as possible. She generally keeps her mouth cinched up tightly so that nothing comes out. She generally has to bite down on the inside of her cheek because he’s so fucking cute. She watches him try to figure out the best rhythm, the best angle, the most optimal amount of pressure that moves his shit along fast but doesn’t cause her to double over in disgust. He actually asks her if she just wants to fucking stop because she doesn’t look like she’s having much fun right now.

She adoringly says, “I love you, Grey. I know you get all weirded out when I say it to you. But I do. You’re _so_ freaking cute.”

He says, “Great,” as his face flushes, and he doubles down on his concentration. “Awesome.”

 

 

  
He tries to convince her that she’ll feel better if she showers. He is dead wrong, and he doesn’t know shit. He just told her to shower because her head smells like dirt from the pinata. She listens to his terrible advice, and she just ends up sitting on the bottom of her shower stall, letting the water beat down on her sore, shaking body. She tries not to be baby about it, so she drags her naked body out of the stall and dries herself off — and it’s fucking labor intensive as shit.

Her waste bin in the bathroom is currently a graveyard for a bunch of used condoms, wrapped up in toilet paper. It is fucking crazy.

He’s still hanging out in bed when she exits the bathroom. She says, “Well, that sucked. Thanks a lot.”

“You look clean, though.”

 

 

  
She has to prepare herself to drive a car again. She starts slowly putting on her clothes, taking long breaks to breathe, and he’s laughing as he gets up and starts helping her. She tells him she wants to try on the bra that Yara bought her, so he goes and grabs it. He pulls it on her from behind and he even reaches into the cup to carefully lift her boob so it sits in the cup right. He does the same to the other side. He says, “It’s so weird to be putting clothes on you. Usually, I’m taking clothes off of you.”

 

 

  
The bra is amazing. Missandei has Grey cut off the tag because she’s keeping this forever. She’s watching as he slowly starts to pull together his own clothes from the other night. He mutters that his clothes smell like her, like it’s a bad thing. But he means that his clothes smells like her vagina and not like her perfume, because she was dry humping him a little bit last night.

She tells him, “Okay, so don’t get creeped out, but I think I can help you.”

He thinks it’s always super promising, when he gets told not to get creeped out.

 

 

  
She shuffles some stuff around in her closet, before she carefully pulls out a storage bin. He quickly starts helping her when he realizes what she’s going for. He extracts the bin, and he opens it. He sees a few cameras, a few photo albums, a few books, and he also sees a neat, folded pile of men's clothes. They are his clothes. From before.

“Oh, shit,” he says.

“Yeaaah,” she says slowly. “I kept some of your clothes. It’s cool and not weird, right?” She actually used to smell and wear his clothes for comfort, in the thick of their breakup. And then when the clothes stopped smelling like him, she sobbed over that like a lunatic because it felt like she had lost the very last part of him that she still had. And then she washed his clothes and stored them away.

 

 

  
He’s wearing his old clothes. It feels completely insane. These are his jeans, and this is his t-shirt. And she even had a pair of his boxers.

He runs his hands down his chest, feeling the cotton fabric of his shirt. He says, “Wow. I have not gained or lost any weight.”

 

 

  
He has her keys in his hand, and he’s waiting for her to pull the strap of her purse over her head and check for all of her things — check to see if she forgot anything. As he holds open the door for her — because he has to lock up behind them — she says to him, “How come you don’t have a car anyway? Your life would be a lot easier if you had a car. Because you can drive your equipment around yourself. ”

“You know,” he says. “I held off on big purchases for a long time because I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop, you know? I was waiting for my business to just crash and burn to the ground.” He shrugs. “And then it just became a habit, to not spend money in case it all goes away.”

“Well, what if you just pay cash for a car?” she asks, watching him lock her door. “Then you wouldn’t have any debt, in the event that your business fails, which — duh — is not fucking happening.”

“That’s a good point,” he says. “Okay, let’s do it.”

“Let’s do what?” she says.

He grins at her. “Let’s go buy me a car. Right now.”

“What? For real?”

 

 

  
They end up spending a big chunk of the day together. Grey is starving and Missandei does not want to eat. So she watches him eat a sandwich and a bowl of soup as she chats with him and talks about how shitty she feels but also how awesome her party was. She had a blast and everyone was so amazing. The pinata thing was way fucking weird and dangerous though. She asks him to imagine how that would go over at a child’s party.

He still eats sandwiches kind of sexy — like huge bites, like he’s never been fed before in his life. And today, she tells him so. She tells him he eats sandwiches really sexy.

His mouth is full as he says, “Man, I cannot handle another euphemism for sex. Sandwiches are just sandwiches and not like, your genitals right?” He stores some of his bite in his cheeks. He picks up a fallen tomato and he shoves it into his mouth. And then he wipes some mayo off his lips with the back of his hand. He says, “This is sexy? This turns you on?” He shakes his head at her, and he grins. And then he says, “Wanna take a bite? Just a small one. Come on, you need to eat,” as he holds out a corner of his sandwich out for her.

 

 

  
Missandei thinks Grey is totally messing with her — even as he drives up to the dealership. She is impressed with how committed he is to this game of chicken — and she’s skeptical, even has he exits her car. He waits for her patiently as she steps out, too, blinking at the sun.

A sales guy walks up to them. The guy and Grey start talking. They even go on a test drive in a few models. And then Grey does some more talking with the sales guy at a desk. And then Grey signs paperwork. And then they leave the dealership to go to his bank to retrieve a cashier’s check. And then they go back to the dealership to pick up his car, which has been washed in the time that they’ve been gone.

She looks at him in awe. She says, “Oh my God, you just bought a car!”

 

 

  
They have to take a break before dinner. There’s nothing else — no other excuse — that they can use to prolong their time together. They are not in a place where they feel comfortable having no reason to be around each other.

He tells himself he has to go home and actually bathe himself. She acknowledges that she has to go home and change, maybe take a short nap and maybe finally get past this hangover. He has a car now, too. So he can just like . . . leave whenever he needs to. It’s actually crazy to watch him stand next to a strange car — that he now owns.

“I’ll see you later?” she says. They are meeting up for dinner with Sandor and Daario and everyone else.

“Yeah,” he says. “I’ll see you in a few hours.”

And then he’s just standing there — doing nothing. He’s supposed to get into his car. She doesn’t realize that he is currently debating with himself over whether he should kiss her bye or not. They don’t usually kiss bye out in public. They typically only kiss bye when she’s leaving his apartment.

The moment passes. She kind of laughs at him. She says, “Okay,” as she starts to walk away — backwards so she can look at him. “Later.”

 

 

 

 


	41. Kovarro wants to fuck Missy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grey finds that it's still very hard to put himself out there and be vulnerable. Missy finds that there are people in the world who do not get her art. Drogo is probably the best and worst big brother ever.

 

 

  
After her nameday, Grey generally does what he is really great at. He suppresses the fuck out of all of his feelings, and he holds himself at a greater distance from her so that this thing between them can cool down a little bit.

At dinner with Daario, Sandor, and Gendry, Missandei tries to hug Grey in greeting, but he basically almost accidentally punches her in the face in his haste to give her a friendly, non-sexy pat on the shoulder. She gives him a look, but she pretty much lets it go, and dinner is pretty normal.

A few days after that, he forces himself to tell her he’s busy when she texts him about coming over after work. Because he doesn’t want her to think that he lives to fuck her, and he doesn’t want to actually get back to the point where he’s addicted to fucking her.

She seems admirably unfazed by the raincheck. She writes him: _kk, another time then._

He spends the time alone reading a book and also washing his dishes. He goes for a run to burn off some excess energy. And then he goes to bed way early because he is way bored.

 

 

  
Kovarro has been driving a supply truck for Marselen for about eight months now. It’s been long enough that Kovarro is pretty sure this is not his calling in life. So it’s totally fine with him if he loses his job. This is why he sidles up to his boss during closing time and asks Mars if Mars’ sister is available.

Mars kind of recoils and lets his glasses drop on his nose a little bit. He looks up from his paperwork, and he visually examines Kovarro’s face. Mars is actually wondering if Kovarro is perhaps mistaken and misspeaking, if Kovarro is referring to Camille or something. Because Kovarro is twenty-five years old and closer in age to Mars’ daughter than he is to Mars’ sister. If Kovarro is referring to Camille, the answer is _fuck no._ That’s his _daughter._

“You talking about Missy?” Mars asks.

“Yeah,” Kovarro says. He’s run into Mars’ sister a few times — had a few conversations with her. He spent some time with her during the anniversary party. He recently chatted her up at her nameday thing at Mars’ house. He has eyes, and he’s been on her Instagram account, so he knows that she has a sick body and looks real fucking good naked. He knows that she has an incredible ass and magnificent tits.

He says none of this to Mars. Because he’s not fucking stupid. He just says, “She seems really cool.”

Naturally, Mars first instinct to quickly size up Kovarro — who is obviously too young and too immature for his sister, who didn’t go to college, who is definitely a player, and who is not even a fucking very good delivery driver — and Mars basically wants to tell Kovarro that he’s fucking fired and to stay the fuck away from Mars’ sister.

But Mars has been yelled at a lot by his daughters — especially by Sarah, who constantly tells him that he’s body shaming her and that he’s not very sex positive and that he will give her a complex that will affect all of her future relationships in life with men.

Sarah has really fucked with his mind.

And he also thinks about the conversations he’s been having with Miss, about how she is a grownass woman who no longer needs his protection. He realizes that he’s a cliche, that he’s the kind of person who probably will never think that any guy out there is good enough for his sister.

So Mars says, “She’s in a situation. But she’s single, I think.”

“A situation ain’t married,” Kovarro drawls.

Mars completely hates this guy now.

 

 

  
Grey comes from a fairly high context culture because of the relative geographical isolation of the Summer Isles from other cultures and also because of its relative homogeneity. However, whatever quality this might’ve been imprinted on his personality was cut really short due to immigrating at a very young age and also due to the premature death of his parents. This resulted in a identity that largely pivots around alienation and feeling like an outsider. He never belonged anywhere. He never had a group or a people that he can pull information and social mores from. He also had the brain tumor, a confusing adolescence of pain and also a lot of ostracism. And then there is the very strange route that his sexual development took.

When he’s in the Summer Isles, he notices — all the time — that he doesn’t even fucking understand what people are saying, in a way that extends far past simple language barrier. He can’t naturally intuit what people are actually trying to say versus what is coming out of their mouths. This is perhaps why he works so hard to examine home and to try to be faithful in how he captures home. He sometimes feels like he’s constantly trying to regain what he has lost.

He keeps learning that he does best with a lot of explicitness in communication. He’s not a person who is naturally very considerate or caring in the way that Westerners can be. He didn’t think to even get Missandei a present for her nameday, for instance. The thought that he should get her a gift because he cares about her and because it’s a special day for her did not even occur to him until he saw Yara whip out a plastic bag that held really specific underwear.

He didn’t even think about the burden he was placing on Yara — both the emotional burden he put on her and also the burden of transporting his ass everywhere — until she brought it up with him and told him that he just never asks her about how she is doing.

He has also realized he was placing a burden on Missandei — always making her come to him for sex.

This is partly why he finally bought a car — it’s so he can stop being such a fucking drain on the women in his life. This is also partly why he goes over to Yara’s place in his new car, to show her that he has purchased a car, and also to like, hang out for a little bit with her.

She looks dumbfounded — by his gesture and also by the car. Her eyes are wide as she stands on the front stoop of her townhouse. She says, “Holy fuck. You bought a car.”

 

 

  
Yara can tell that Grey is trying — like, really hard — and it’s really fucking adorable and also super awkward because none of this comes naturally to him. When he asks her questions about her life, it feels like a job interview — like, it feels very strategic and calculated and also kind of cold.

He asks her if her brother is home. Yara tells him that Theon is currently out. He asks her if that makes her nervous and if it makes her wonder if Theon is off killing himself. She tells Grey that she is not currently worried about that. She knows where Theon is. Theon is seeing a movie with Robb. They’ve been trying to hang out more because those two are trying to work some things out. Grey asks her how she feels about that — about her brother working things out with Robb. Yara generally forces herself to not laugh at him. With a straight face, she tells him that she feels okay about it. She’s glad that Theon is extending his social circle, and she’s glad that Robb is less of a douchebag these days. Grey then asks, “Who is Robb?”

And then she really does laugh out loud. She says, “Jon’s brother. You met him once, I think.”

“Oh,” Grey says. “Yes. I remember meeting him. At Ygritte and Jon’s house.”

“Yes,” Yara says gravely. “That was where you met him.”

 

 

  
They don’t have a receptionist or an office manager because Grey and Drogo do not want to pay that salary — so they just make Pyp do some of that kind of work. Pyp is constantly answering the phone, for instance. He’s slightly overworked, and he thinks that he’s probably about another half a year out before he flips out and takes a stand and demands that Drogo and Grey hire someone to man the phones, order supplies, manage licenses, run errands, pick up prints, and coordinate travel schedules — or they can give Pyp a raise to keep him handling this extra bullshit.

When he answers the phone and hears an old lady voice, Pyp grimaces because he’s kind of ageist. He’s inundated with shit to do, and he is panicking over the thought of being trapped on the phone on a personal call with someone’s grandma.

The old lady wants to talk to Missandei. Pyp tells the old lady that Missandei is not in the office right now, but he can take a message. The old lady isn’t into that idea at all, and insists that it’s urgent. The old lady wants Pyp to magically patch her through to Missandei right away, because there’s a pressing matter to discuss. Pyp looks around the office at the rest of the staff, who are all pretty quiet and concentrating on their own computer screens — there’s no one he can make eye contact to quickly commiserate with — and then Pyp says, “Yeah, we don’t push calls through to her personal cell phone unless it’s an emergency. Is this an emergency?”

And then the lady totally gets uppity and calls him young man. She tells him that it’s imperative that she talks to Missandei. It’s a work matter.

Pyp looks through Grey’s open door — Grey is sitting there actually eating his lunch — one of those steak wraps him and Drogo love so much. And Pyp decides, fuck it, he’s going to throw this problem at his boss because he would rather take Grey’s yelling than deal with this freaking ancient lady another second. He says, “Hey, if it’s a work matter, do you want to talk to the big boss instead of Missandei?”

 

 

  
Grey sits up in his chair when his phone rings. He pulls on his headset before connecting the call. He says, “Hello, this is Grey.” And then he listens for a bit. And then he gets all fucking tired and feels weary. He says, “Hey, Olenna. How are you?”

 

 

  
Pyp knows that he’s really in for it, when Grey gets off the phone with the old lady — after ten long minutes of talking. He watches Grey out of the corner of his eye as Grey leaves his office and walks over to Pyp’s desk.

Pyp expects to get reamed, just verbally assaulted in front of everyone. But instead, Grey just says, “Hey, don’t send me calls meant for Missandei.”

 

 

  
After the entire office has shut down and everyone else has gone home — after she is positive that they are alone — she walks up to him in the break room. His ritual when he is in the office is that he washes all of their dishes like a total parent each night.

She gets close to him. She gets on her tiptoes, and she leans over to give him a soft kiss on the corner of his mouth. She says, “Hey.”

He doesn’t pause in his washing. He just says, “Hey,” in return.

“You’ve been busy lately,” she says, standing back a bit. “I haven’t seen you in a while. Is everything going good?”

He looks at her, trying to force out a reassuring smile. He says, “Yeah, everything is plugging along. Everything is normal.”

She smiles back at him. She says, “That’s good.” And then she says, “Do you wanna come over tonight? Do you want me to come over?”

And because he is so fucking weak, he says, “Yes.”

 

 

  
Her body smells like his spit when she goes to leave his apartment. Like always, she pauses at the door. Like always, he walks her there. Like always, she circles her arms loosely around his neck, and she gets in close.

He kisses her deeply, aggressively like he’s not exhausted and worn out by her, with his hand going for her thigh. He drags her even closer, pushing his tongue against hers, clashing his nose with hers as he orients his head to the side to get in there even more. More has become a word that been haunting him. It’s been a word that he has been starting to associate with her. He’s been wanting more from her. It is fucking terrible, and he should have known better.

She licks her own lips when they part. She smiles and makes a really sweet noise as she gives him a quick cuddle next to his door, her mouth momentarily pressing on the pulse point in his neck. She says, “Ah, I wish it wasn’t Thursday.” She means that she wishes it was the weekend so she can stay up late with him. She means she wishes they didn’t have work in the morning. “Do you have something going on Saturday night? There’s this food walk in my neighborhood that I’m going to check out. Wanna go, too?”

She has also been inching her way back to a certain kind of intimacy with him — and it’s not altogether a conscious effort on her part. Her problem is that she just loves him.

“Maybe,” he says. “I’m not sure what my Saturday looks like yet.” He’s lying. He has fucking nothing going on on Saturday.

“Oh, okay,” she says, still smiling at him, still leaning into him. “Just let me know.”

 

 

  
Kovarro is twenty-five years old, so he asks Missandei out like how he usually asks out women. He DMs her on Instagram, and he uses a lot of vague and coded language. He asks her how it’s going. It takes her half a day to respond because she’s so busy. But during her late lunch at her desk, she messages him back and tells him things are good. And she asks him if her brother is okay. Because maybe this guy is DM’ing her out of the blue to tell her that her brother suffered an accident at work and _is dead_ now.

But Kovarro says, cool. It’s cool that things are good. Mars is fine. He adds in a “haha,” which she doesn’t get. She doesn’t get why it’s funny.

And then Kovarro asks her if she feels like chilling sometime.

 

 

  
Missandei looks so puzzled and so wary of her phone that, of course, Drogo has to snatch it out of her hands as he walks by her. She goes, “Hey! Drogo!” and starts pawing for her phone back as he invades her privacy because he does not even give a shit. He has four sisters. Fucking with their lives and reading their text messages is like fucking breathing to him. Taunting them is also second nature. He lets out a low whistle as he reads her exchange with Kovarro.

And then he tosses her back her phone. He says, “Well, that guy wants to fuck you. _Definitely.”_

 

 

  
Missandei protests and says that Kovarro is a baby. She’s almost an entire decade older than he is. Drogo is an idiot. The kid is just friendly. And maybe he needs like, help with a resume or he needs to pick her brain for a job interview or something. That’s probably why he wants to chill with her sometime.

Drogo says, “Nah, babe. He wants to fuck you.” And he says it loud. He’s been saying it very loudly. Like, the entire office is interested now. The entire office is taking time off of billable work to roll their office chairs over and huddle around Missandei’s desk.

Pyp, who is in the same age bracket as Kovarro and thinks that he’s really fucking smooth the ladies even though he’s not, confidently grabs Missandei’s phone out of her hands and tries to read the message. Her phone is locked though, so he has to hold it back out to her and ask, “Can you unlock this?”

“No, twerp,” Missy says. “I’m not going to unlock my phone so you can all make fun of me, mock me, and over-analyze a simple conversation.”

“Don’t worry, I got it,” Drogo mutters. He’s behind her at her computer now. She has her personal email open in a browser along with her work email. He bets that her browser saves all of her log-ins, and that she’s also logged into her Instagram account. He’s right. Well, sort of. She’s using an app. He’s already pulling up the chat on the screen. He’s already screencapping it. He’s already sending it to himself though Missy’s personal email account. Christ, he is so fucking awesome at this shit.

 

 

  
When Grey gets back to the office — _none of them_ are fucking working. They are all in the conference room, but he can tell just from the way they are sitting that they are fucking dicking around like a bunch of dumb idiots.

He goes and drops off his bag in his office before he pivots back around and heads to the conference room to ruin their day and tell them all to get the fuck back to work.

In the conference room, the TV is on with a screenshot of a text conversation, and Meera is whiteboarding. There are a number of lists and a graph on the whiteboard. And at the very top of board, in block letters, it says: DOES THIS GUY WANT TO FUCK MISSANDEI OR NOT?

Grey says, “What the fuck is going on?”

 

 

 


	42. Grey is an asshole

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grey is not good at apologizing.

 

 

He regrets asking. Because they all start telling him what is going on. Yoren tells him the obvious, as if he cannot fucking _read._ Yoren tells him that they are discussing whether a guy wants to fuck Missandei or not. Meera gestures to the TV screen and points to the bit of text that says, _“Wanna chill sometime?”_ and she tells Grey that this is the point where it’s very apparent that this guy really wants to fuck Missandei.

Under most circumstances, Grey would tell them all to stop fucking being distracted so easily and to just get back to work already. But he has a real personal investment in the this topic of conversation, so he says, “Who _is_ this guy?”

“Oh!” Jojen says eagerly, leaning forward to hit a few buttons on the laptop in front of him. Jojen is navigating away from the screencap convo and is going to Kovarro’s Instagram profile. It is fucking full of pictures of the guy shirtless. Jojen says, “It’s this guy!”

 

 

  
Drogo is fucking laughing at him. Missandei is also trying not to smile at him. Because he’s having a hard time keeping his shit locked down. He is getting super agitated, and he also can’t walk out of the room until he has all of the information. Pyp, Meera, and Jojen take turns telling him all of the facts and all of the polling they have done. They have texted a lot of their friends, and it’s pretty unanimous. Dude wants to fuck Missandei. That pretty much has been established. They were actually talking about what Missandei should do — get fucked by a scorching hot guy who looks like an underwear model or no? — when Grey got back to the office.

The polls are generally veering in the affirmative. Missandei should strongly consider getting fucked by Kovarro because he’s super hot, is young and probably really energetic and eager to please — and Missandei has not even freaking dated in a minute. Missy deserves to go out there and let loose and just have some casual fun with someone who is attracted to her. Missy deserves orgasms.

“Oh my God, shut up, Meera,” Grey says. Sometimes, he’s so fucking sick of her millennial feminist bullshit. When he tells her to stop talking about sex at work, she tells him that he’s oppressing her with patriarchy. Sometimes he has to scream at her that talking about sex at work just generally doesn’t fucking fly _anywhere._ And then she tries to break his mind by telling him that it would definitely fly at a health clinic or at a women’s magazine.

“I will not shut up!” Meera says, really self-righteously. “You can’t just silence me because —”

“Oh my God, I _get it!_ Where was this fucking sex positivity when we caught Lommy with porn on his computer?”

“Hey!” Lommy says. “That was an accident! And it was animated! So it was a victimless —”

“Shut up!” Grey snaps.

 

 

  
“So where do you fall, Grey?” Pyp asks, trying to update the spreadsheet, ever the project manager. “How do you vote? Should Missandei go get effed by this guy or not?” Pyp actually cannot say the f-word in relation to his boss. Because he respects women.

Grey says, “Uh, I don’t think it’s appropriate for me — _your boss —_ to fucking vote on whether or not I think your _other boss_ should get dicked by some fucking guy. Like, this is wildly inappropriate to be discussing at work.”

 

 

  
The rest of the day is generally shitty for him. There are few looming pieces of work that he’s dragging his feet on because they are labor intensive yet boring. Drogo keeps glancing at his face and then just laughing out loud spontaneously, which makes Grey feel like a real dork. He’s snappish with the staff because they keep asking him a shit-ton of stupid questions all the time.

Missandei is kind of amused, probably because to her, his jealousy and his insecurity are so obvious and so transparent — and that makes him feel just super exposed.

 

 

  
She’s been staying late even though she kind of doesn’t need to because Grey’s been so busy, and the little moments after work are sometimes the only moments she can catch with him. She is wasting hours just to spend a few minutes alone with him. She is vaguely aware that she’s in some real deep shit — deeper than what she predicted for herself. The sex is super fucking amazing. He’s super fucking amazing and talented and smart and sweet and just amazing. And she keeps finding this new depth in how she loves him. She keeps learning that she’s not bottoming out.

 

 

  
At the end of the day, he thinks that she’s scrutinizing him. She’s watching him wash some mugs in the break room sink because the kids are sometimes lazy about washing their fucking dishes, and he hates just waiting for shit to crust over and dry and become a cesspool of smelly shit. She has her arms crossed over her chest, and she’s leaning against the counter, facing him. She’s smiling like she doesn’t even give a fuck, as she says, “Got plans tonight? Wanna do something? Like, do you wanna grab dinner together?”

He’s kind of angry at her. For constantly fucking with his head and fucking with his insides. His anger toward her is currently very abstract because everything has happened so fast that he hasn’t had enough time to process it all. He hasn’t had time to identify the core of why he feels the way he feels. He feels upset that Olenna called and that Missandei has apparently been talking to Olenna in secret about work possibilities. He’s upset that Missandei is a fucking liar of omission. He feels upset that he looks like such an idiot, for kind of assuming that their fuck-lationship was an exclusive one because he doesn’t want to sleep with anyone except for her, and _everyone_ on the fucking planet wants to have sex with her. He’s feels upset that he apparently was stupid enough to assume that there would be any sort of permanence with her because all she fucking knows how to do is leave. He feels angry that she keeps laughing at him, like his pain is funny to her somehow. He feels pissed that this is all happening to him again, and she just continues to not give a fucking shit.

So he makes the fatal mistake of responding to her dinner request by petulantly saying, “Aren’t you gonna be too busy getting fucked by your new boyfriend?”

She looks completely caught off guard and surprised. Her eyes are wide as she says, “Whoa.” And then she says, “Did you just say that?” And then she blinks. And then she says, “I can’t believe you just said that to me.”

He does not let up. He says, “Why? We’re not _together._ We’re not in a _relationship._ I don’t _own_ you. You can do _whatever_ you want. With _whoever_ you want. He seems really fun and cool and right up your alley.”

“What the hell?” she says, looking at him like he’s grown another head. “What the hell does that even _mean?”_ And then another second passes as she rapidly tries to think. And then she says, “Why are you being like this?”

“I’m not being like anything.”

“Wow,” she says, staring at him, searching his face for some sort of reason why he is being like this. She finds none. So she says, “I think I’m angry with you right now.”

“I don’t know why you’d be angry with me,” he says, trying to sound very removed, unaffected, and despondent. “We don’t owe each other anything.”

And then — upon hearing that — her face condenses into this kind of determination. She pushes herself off the counter and says, “Yeah, I’m not doing this with you.” And then she walks out of the break room.

 

 

  
She’s generally a sensitive person — she knows this about herself, and it’s no longer something she works so hard to suppress under the altar of being a badass. She has learned that she can still be a badass as she hysterically sobs her guts out. Like, she can be a badass as she patiently listens and counsels the kids’ on their insecurities and their worries about their own talents and abilities. Like, she can be a badass as she suggests to Dany that maybe Dany stop trying to punch down Drogo’s self-esteem with such gusto because part of the motivation behind her anger toward him is Dany’s own hang-ups with her brother and her family and the male-dominated culture that Dany comes from and also the one that she currently lives in.

Missy can be a badass as she generally just starts emoting outward — she starts crying as she leaves the office, as she heads south in her car. She’s still crying a little bit as she stops at the store, because she needs more rolls of tape and just because she’s emotional, it doesn’t mean she has to hide her face from the world as if it’s shameful to feel emotions. The checkout lady asks her if she’s okay, and she has to tell the woman that she is totally fine. It is completely unconvincing, but that is cool, too. Missy is working hard to continue to live within the ambiguities of life.

 

 

  
This is not really a surprise to him — but being a petulant little bitch to her does not make him feel better at all. It’s stunning to him that this fact does not surprise him whatsoever, yet he still found it within himself to be a real petulant bitch to her in the moment.

After their shitty conversation, after she leaves the office, he generally cannot concentrate on anything other than how much of an asshole he is. He kind of went nuts because all he could see in his head was Missandei’s naked body getting plowed by a fucking supermodel who is probably also a great conversationalist — and Grey just couldn’t fucking think straight with that image clouding up his mind.

In the past, he would’ve suppressed, and he probably would’ve committed hard to how right he thinks he is. He probably would’ve wasted a lot of time just feeling wounded and victimizing himself.

He tells himself he can do shit fucking _differently_ this time around.

 

 

  
He actually texts her to tell her that he’s obviously a monumental piece of shit that went insane with his own insecurities, and he tried to make her feel bad just because he felt bad. He texts her this longass text, and he tells her that he was petty, and he wants to apologize and talk things out with her. He texts her and asks her if he can please come over to talk.

Missy is completely shocked when she receives his texts. He never typically cops to having insecurities. He never typically does it so quickly. Usually what happens is that he gets cranky, he takes his frustrations out on the kids because he’s tired, and then he works alone for awhile until he gets over it. And then he starts joking around with the kids again. That is his typical, asinine, immature pattern. He’s been doing this shit for years.

So to hold these text messages in the palm of her hand — it is _insane._ Her heart starts hammering and her pulse starts thudding, and she cries a little more — but this time in kind of this hopeful way. She quickly responds and tells him it’s totally okay for him to come over. She really wants him to. Just walk in. The door will be unlocked.

 

 

  
He goes over to her place completely with the intent of working things out with her and telling her that he’s really fucking sorry for being such a douchebag. He drives kind of fast and kind of recklessly because he just wants this fight to be _over_ already. He wants to just grab her and hold her and just assure himself that he didn’t royally fuck this up with her.

There’s a parking spot right in front of the house, on the street. He takes it as a sign, and he parallels all scarily and all fast. He steps out of his car and slams the door shut — she might be able to hear that from inside her place. And then he jogs down the steps, down the narrow path to the entrance. He wrenches the door open. It is unlocked, just like she said it would be.

She’s been waiting for him, anticipating him. This is why she beams up at him and softly says, “Hi, babe.”

But then he sees a bunch of cardboard boxes all packed up. And his apology completely flies _the fuck_ out of his head. He says, “What’s with the boxes? Are you going somewhere?”

She’s smiling up at him from the floor — because she reasonably thinks that he’s here so that they can make up. All of the signs have pointed to that. Her hair is tied up in a fluffy ball on top of her head and her feet are holding a big roll of packing tape. She’s still smiling up at him as she says, “Oh, I’m moving.”

He loses it. He just loses it. He shouts, “When the _fuck_ were you gonna tell me you are leaving!”

 

 

  
She’s trying not to cry in confusion and also in sadness as he stands there and just yells terrible shit at her. He calls her selfish and callous. He says her behavior is so typical. He says that she is always fucking hiding things from him. He tells her that she doesn't even give a shit about him.

She tries to talk over him and tell him that she actually loves him, so she actually gives many shits about him. She tries to tell him that she thinks she actually mentioned this to him — like, she’s pretty sure told him that her landlord wants to rent out this basement unit to a family friend who is moving to town, and she is fine with ending the lease early and moving out to a new place. That is why she is leaving this place. Her landlords are like, even helping her a little bit with moving costs. Like, they were the ones who brought down all of the boxes for her stuff.

He’s just pissed that she’s trying to railroad him again, and she’s trying to make him feel like _he’s_ fucking _crazy_ even though he’s _not crazy._ He tells her that he fucking knows she’s been talking to Olenna about a job offer. He sarcastically shouts that this is just like fucking seven years ago, except this time he’s not going to be fucking _stupid_ enough to fucking hang on like he did the fucking last time.

Missandei says, “What?” because she is still so confused and so disoriented. This is not at all what she was expecting from him tonight. She says, “Yeah, I still talk to Olenna sometimes. She was my boss for years. We’re friendly. And yeah, she talks about working together all the time. People talk to me all the time about working together because I am good at my job. I am kind of a hot commodity.” She looks around the room in disbelief. “I wasn’t keeping that a secret from you. I just didn’t think to tell you because it’s just normal stuff. I tell people no to side jobs all the time. I told Marge no, just this morning.”

“Well, what the fuck!” he shouts. “With these boxes!”

“I am moving _five blocks_ away. Why are you freaking out?”

 

 

Grey is being so loud and so disruptive that Missandei’s landlords can actually hear him through their floor. Her landlords become concerned for her enough that one of them actually walks down to knock on her front door.

She has to rub tears out of her eyes before she opens the door. She knows this shit does not look good at all. This is a lot like that one time in Yin when she fell asleep because she was exhausted, and he went absolutely apeshit because he couldn’t find her after like, two seconds of looking. She gives Dave — the husband — a strained smile, and she says, “Sorry, are we bothering you? I’m sorry. We’ll keep it down, I promise. I’m really sorry. We didn’t wake up Connor, did we?”

Dave looks into the room, at Grey, who is standing angrily in the center of it. Dave looks back at Missandei. He says, “Missandei, are you okay? Do you want to come upstairs with me?”

 

 

  
After Missandei convinces her landlord that she’s not a battered woman, and she isn’t currently getting the shit beaten out of her by Grey, after Dave reluctantly goes back upstairs, Missy feels so fucking embarrassed. She turns back to Grey to tell him that they should just take a break from this stupid fight and come back to it later when they are calmer. Maybe they can try to talk about this again tomorrow or something.

But he cuts her off by saying, “I don’t think we should do this anymore.”

“This fight?”

“No,” he says. “Us.”

 

 

 

 


	43. Grey breaks up with Missy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grey is ambitious and not content to just solely terrorize Missy. He takes his show on the road and terrorizes all of his friends!

 

 

  
Her heart generally breaks as she sits on her bed and listens to him explain to her why they are no good for each other. He tells her that they are each other’s bad habit. They are each other’s crutch. He tells her that he’s preventing her from living her life and from moving on by engaging in a sexual relationship with her. He tells her that he realized this when he was confronted with the entire text message thing and saw that she was holding herself back from a potential relationship that could actually be healthy and whole because she is kind of attached to him. He is just telling her a whole bunch of shit about what he thinks is good for her and how he thinks she should live her life. He is just demonstrating to her how fucking honorable and strong he thinks he is, by cutting them off from one another.

She doesn’t say anything for a long time. Because as angry as she is at him, what overshadows that is how much this hurts. It hurts more than she thought it would — and she doesn’t know why this is a surprise because it always hurts more than she thinks it will. It hurts so much that it’s hard to breathe, and it’s hard not to cry. She tries to stop his onslaught of shitty reasons why he doesn’t let himself love her by saying, “Look, if you don’t want to have sex together anymore, we don’t have to. It’s fine. You don’t have to keep telling me I’m terrible for you, okay?”

 _“I’m_ terrible for _you,”_ he corrects.

And then she loses it. Her face crumples up, her nose stuffs up, her eyes sting. She cries as she forces out these words: “I don’t understand how you can be so terrible for me when you make me so happy. Don’t I make you happy, too?”

“Don’t fucking _do this,_ Missandei,” he says. “I can’t _do this again_ with you.” He’s actually talking about two different things. He means that he doesn’t want to fucking talk about how fucking happy she makes him feel. And he also means that he cannot fucking let that happiness continue to build until it fucking gets snatched the fuck away again.

But he’s confusing, and she can’t follow his vague logic leaps. She says, “I don’t understand what is happening right now. I thought we were fine. I thought we were in a really nice groove.” She starts rapidly blinking, trying to not let herself cry harder. Sometimes when she cries too much, it’s impossible to talk. She feels really stupid and vulnerable and just splayed open as she asks, “Was I putting too much pressure on you? Like, was I asking for too much, with my nameday party and like, with how often I was texting you?” She’s wringing her hands in her lap, and she breaks eye contact so that she can stare at the wall. “I know I was, um, I was asking you to have dinner with me a lot. I’m realizing that now. Um, I’m sorry if that made you feel pressured. I wasn’t — I wasn’t trying to make this all serious. Um, but I see how it must’ve all looked to you. I’m sorry.”

 

 

  
She thinks that this is a really torturous and bizarre sort of role reversal. She remembers what it was like to hold a hot phone to her ear as she made herself listen to him walk himself through their entire relationship, trying to make sense of why they were reaching the end of it. She remembers his voice trying to get her to say these terrible things to him, so that he could hate her and have something else to focus on beyond how much he loved her. He tried to get her to tell him that she never loved him at all. And she refused to do that because she refused to lie.

It’s so trippy to be breaking up again — especially since it never really felt like she had him again. It never really felt like they were back together again at all.

For him, it’s kind of really hard to watch her cry. He never realized that the one benefit of a very cold phone breakup is that he didn’t have to actually watch her cry over the loss of him. He was able to bury a lot of empathy because he didn’t have to look her in the face.

But now, he finds it within himself to say, “Don’t cry. It will be okay.”

She says, “Remember when we picked up Sarah from that party and brought her back here — and remember how she was just a sobbing mess? I told her no boy is worth crying this much over. Even right at that moment, I knew I was a big fucking hypocrite. Even though I knew — I am like, still shocked that I am doing this right now.” She reaches her fingers up to press them into her sore eyelids. “What are we supposed to do with work?”

“What do you mean?” he says. He is doing an amazing job of being removed and sounding disconnected. He has done an amazing job of mitigating risk by keeping his engagement very low with her.

She kind of chuckles — really humorlessly. She says, “How am I supposed to spend up to twelve hours a day with you?”

He willfully acts like he doesn’t quite know what she means. He says, “We can go back to how it was when you first came on. Or if that doesn’t work for you — you can always quit. We also talked about that possibility, when you first came on.”

“Awesome,” she says bitterly. She is now bitter that he is being like this. She is bitter that he can pretend so convincingly like this. She says, “I’m a real cautionary tale. This is why you don’t sleep with the boss.”

Grey says nothing to that.

“I never thought I’d have this in common with Daario,” she says. “I should call him up and have a chat with him about coping mechanisms, though I remember that he distinctly believed that leaving and instating a permanent separation was the way to go.”

Grey still says nothing. He’s just _standing there._ She thinks that it must be great to be such a winner — to win the breakup because she’s a fucking mess because she was so invested and so in love, and he’s chilling because he was never invested. Must be nice. She says, “Are you waiting for me to be done talking so you can peace the fuck on out of here? I’m sorry my heartbreak is so sarcastic and angry. Must be an inconvenience for you. I know I was just an easy lay to you.”

Grey kind of shakes his head at that — almost imperceptibly. He kind of looks fed up and annoyed as he does it.

She says, “Oh, I’m sorry. Did I just _offend_ you?”

Again. He just stares at her and says a fuckton of nothing.

 

 

  
She thinks that his silence is real fucking bullshit. She thinks he’s a real fucker. She’s so fucking sad and so fucking upset that she starts lashing out and finding ways to just get the fuck under his skin so that she can just get a _real_ response from him. She tells him she’s glad that they are not having sex anymore, because she is real fucking tired of how fucking good the sex was and how many fucking orgasms she was having. And then she realizes that this shit does not sound mean at all. This shit actually sounds really complimentary. So she switches tack, and she starts picking on how fucking maniacally work-obsessed he is, that there is no space for anything or anyone else. She is accusatory as she says she’s never known anyone who loves the way he does, who feels a depth of compassion for other people’s lives the way that he does. And she just starts _crying_ again because she is so fucking bad at being mean to him.

She sighs deeply. She says. “Maybe we can’t work together anymore.”

He says, “Okay. If that’s what you need to do.”

She says, “I love my job, though. I love those kids, though.”

He says, “So then stay. I’m not trying to force you out. They like you a lot, too.”

 

 

  
They can’t talk in circles for the entire night. They also probably should not do another breakup that lasts for long weeks.

To him, she says, “I’m seeing it now. I don’t know why I didn’t see it earlier. You have not forgiven me at all. You are still really angry with me over what happened. You are still holding it against me.”

She means that he has never forgiven her for leaving all those years ago.

She says, “You told me that I love you until I don’t. And you’re just wrong and are a major asshole. I can’t even stop loving you, even if I wanted to. But you never turn around and assess yourself. You never think about how awful it is for me to love you while you don’t love me back. You don’t want to hear me say it because it makes you feel guilty. And you don’t even let yourself think about how that must make me feel, because you just love the idea of yourself as a martyr. You love being a martyr more than you love being happy. Because you are a _coward.”_

She gestures to her moving boxes.

She says, “I like how you leapt to a bunch of incorrect assumptions on your own, because you couldn’t even bring yourself to talk to me about how you were feeling.”

She just grabs onto his face when he’s at her front door — and she just sobs as she lets herself just hold him for the last time. And she tells him, “I love you so much. I’ve never loved anyone the way I love you. I can’t love anyone like how I love you. I’m so sad that it can’t work out for us.” And she kisses him — with her puffy face burning — with her numb lips pressed to his. And she generally just fucking dies inside at his lack of response — at his general lack of feeling.

 

 

  
Everyone pretty much knows when Grey and Missandei break up again. It’s not a huge surprise to anyone. Because there were a lot of red flags. Mostly how it was super obvious they were sleeping with each other again, but how Grey still kept refusing to be seen in public with her, and how he kept refusing to acknowledge Missandei as someone that he cares for — publicly. Mostly how Grey wouldn’t invite her to any of the dinner parties. Mostly how Grey liked to scream out, “I don’t fucking know! Why don’t you ask _her!”_ whenever one of them simply asked, for the sake of convenience, if he knew if Missandei was busy on a certain night.

Dany is pretty much an expert on this sort of thing. It took her a really, really long time to be comfortable enough to take Drogo to one of her work events. She was really wary of Drogo saying something stupid or tone-deaf around different types of people because he does not have the same interest in a lot of the things that the people in her circle do. He doesn’t see plays. He doesn’t go to the opera. He doesn’t even really read. She was wary that he’d say something stupid and that she would feel judged and scrutinized for being with someone who is just pretty and kind of dumb.

And _then_ she realized that fucking _men_ probably never have this concern. Men fucking probably never worry that the women they are with are too pretty and too fucking dumb.

So she finally took Drogo to a work event — a fundraiser. He cleans up really nicely, and he was actually really touched that she invited him — which almost made the entire effort worth it to her. He definitely still drank way too much and kind of borderline embarrassed her a few times with his bawdy sense of humor like he doesn’t know all of the people around them are not like that — but he resolutely refuses to change himself. And in the end, it wasn’t that horrible. People tend to be pretty charmed by him, sometimes purely, sometimes patronizingly. But sometimes she wants to grind her teeth around them, too. She finds that it’s nice to have a partner at these things.

Dany is fairly fatigued by all of the drama. Between Drogo threatening to break up with her each month and having to listen to Irri’s stupid fucking personal problems every day — Dany is pretty tapped out. She has no salient advice to give. The best she can do is just tell Missandei to resort to mindless violence. Just bash Grey’s face in with a tire iron and tell him to go fuck himself because no woman will ever want to touch him again because his body is so disgusting, and he’s so fucking weird and unlovable.

“You know what a tire iron is?” Missandei asks, also wincing because Dany is like, super harsh and scarily always knows the exact thing to say to hurt people the most.

“Oh my God,” Dany mutters, dropping her face. She knows what a tire iron is because of Drogo.

 

 

  
Missandei actually takes a week off of work — just so she can really wallow with her full concentration. She tells the office it’s because she has the days, and she’s in the middle of moving to another apartment so it’d be nice to have the time off to unpack and stuff.

It’s insanely short notice, and it’s a bit of an inconvenience for Drogo, Grey, and Yoren, but Drogo is fine with it. Yoren is completely pissed and keeps wondering out loud why he doesn’t get to take vacation whenever the fuck he feels like it.

Drogo is fine with this because he really _does not_ want Missy to quit. His life will become hard again if she quits. He’s not at all above worrying about how their respective heartbreaks will fucking inconvenience him. He thinks that maybe he can like, convince Missy to take a sabbatical or something. Maybe she can go off and do something else for like, a month or two or something, to get her mind off of everything. Maybe if she does that and comes back a bit more clear-headed and less broken — maybe then she will stay.

Grey is utterly terrible and shitty at work for the week that Missandei is gone. The kids don’t really think it’s noteworthy or strange. Because Grey is typically a royal bitch whenever Missy is gone. His behavior is fairly normal to them.

 

 

  
Jaime knows when Grey and Missy stop sleeping with each other, because Grey becomes the worst fucking hag in the entire fucking history of the modern world. Their breakup was only cute and endearing the first time, just like how videos of cats are only cute the first time. After that, it’s just like — how many fucking _four-minute videos of cats_ must Jaime be fucking forced to watch and pretend to laugh at before he fucking loses his fucking mind?

Grey is annoying the shit out of all of them. Yara is annoyed with him. Drogo is annoyed with him. Dany is annoyed with him. Tyrion is annoyed with him. Even Sansa, who Grey doesn’t really consider a friend but Jaime knows that she considers Grey a friend of hers — is annoyed with him.

Grey is fucking annoying because he cannot be alone because when he is alone, he has to face his own shitty feelings and the shitty thoughts in his head. In order to stop himself from being alone, he keeps bombarding them all with his presence. Except when he bombards them with his presence, it’s not like he is fun and congenial. He’s actually really bitchy and hypercritical of everything. He has this tendency of pointing out platitudes — and Jaime realizes that they all _constantly_ say platitudes. People generally say a lot of platitudes in everyday conversation.

Like, Jaime tries to tell Grey that Grey just needs to take it one day at a time. And Grey tells Jaime to stop fucking spouting off fucking dumbass cliches like a fucking idiot. It’s like Jaime thinks Grey doesn’t fucking know that he’s supposed to take it one day at a time. That is generally how life fucking works. That is how the fucking _passage of time_ works.

And Jaime casts a glance at Brienne real quick because this is her fucking fault, before he turns back to Grey and is all like, “Wow, thanks for explaining time to me. Maybe you can explain how like, fucking clocks work next.”

Grey actually interrupted Jaime and Brienne’s time together. She is stingy with her time because she’s so freaked out by the thought of them. Jaime generally has to fucking work real hard to convince her that there’s no fucking pressure, sexual or otherwise, on his end. He generally has to work really hard to get her to believe that he has a lot of real affection for her, and this isn’t a fucking long con. Why would he even do that? That is terrible. He really just wants to see where this can go.

Grey actually fucking called Jaime like, five times in a row, forcing Jaime to pick up his phone. And then Brienne just jumped on the chance of having a third wheel at dinner. And then fucking Grey showed up and started eating all of their food and just started fucking rambling on about traffic and how hard it was for him to find parking.

“Oh my God,” Grey says, with his mouth full of bread. “This butter has garlic in it. That’s so fucking annoying. I hate compound butter! What the fuck is even the point in masking a really good cultured butter with a shit ton of fucking garlic! So fucking _annoying!”_

 

 

  
Unlike the rest of the boys, Yara does not put up with Grey’s shitty attitude for long at all. She gets enough of that from all of the other men in her life. So when Grey comes over to her place and starts bitching about how he hates the coffee at his office — _as if_ he has no control over the fucking coffee at his own office — as he bitches about spending so much money on the beans — about how the delivery guy is always late — about how the internet isn’t fast enough — about how her front door is so heavy for no reason — about how his pants fit uncomfortably — about how sick he is of how new his car smells — about how people are always talking while he’s trying to think — about how his shoes make that squeaky noise when he walks in the rain and then goes indoors and walks on linoleum — well, Yara lets him have two minutes for all of this shit before she says, “Hey! You need to _shut the fuck up_ because if I have to listen to another fucking word out of your dipshit mouth, I will fucking _kill myself._ I am so serious! You need to shut the fuck up before I kick you out of my house.”

 _“Yara,”_ Theon admonishes, from where he is stationed at the kitchen island. He’s cutting up some onions for their stir fry.

Grey, who is chopping up broccoli, looks stunned at her outburst. He says, “Oh.”

She sighs, and she says, “Grey, I know you’re in a lot of pain right now — and I sympathize. But you are driving me _nuts._ Seriously, you need to shut the fuck up.”

“Okay,” Grey says, kind of feeling tense and kind of embarrassed and self-conscious now. “I will shut up.”

“No, _moron,”_ Yara says. “I don’t mean shut up forever. I mean talk to me. I also mean I cannot listen to _the bitching_ anymore. But if like, you wanna say something like — of substance — then yeah, talk to me. But don’t talk to me about like, _coffee._ Unless you have some deep-seated trauma, and coffee is a trigger that I don’t know about — then _okay,_ we can talk about coffee. But like, if you just have a normal thing with coffee — then it’s like, _don’t_ talk to me about that.”

Theon is snickering. He’s been through a few super confusing rounds of this with his sister already. They have fought — _a lot_ — because they are both terrible at communication because their father is Balon Greyjoy. So Theon tries to help Grey out. He translates for his sister, and he says, “Yara is trying to say it’s cool if you wanna talk about your feelings with her. But it’s not cool if you wanna avoid the issue by talking about stuff she finds uninteresting.”

 

 

 


	44. Grey is heartbroken

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Missy is back at work after the breakup. Drogo is a friend to all, at the time same time he deals with his own relationship issues. Grey is coping well with everything.

 

 

 

Perhaps because Grey has offered himself up as a parable on what not to do if one wants to keep a bitch, Dany spends about a week trying to communicate better with Drogo. Dany is the kind of person that always feel strapped for time, and she is also intensely results-driven. So she unloads a litany of things that she thinks she should talk about with Drogo. She tells him that sometimes having sex with him is not the greatest time because sometimes he is needy and asks her if it’s good for her, and she feels an inordinate amount of pressure to say yes, which makes her feel angry because she doesn’t like to feel pushed into yeses. Other times, he is kind of out of touch with reality and acts like getting a fleshy, long clit shoved into her orifice fucking _makes her life_ — and she generally wants to punch him right in the face when he gets like that, but she doesn’t because she knows it would make him mad and will probably hurt his feelings. Sometimes she gets pissed that he doesn’t get her off with any sort of consistency. Sometimes she gets pissed when he tries to make sex last too long because she is busy and has shit to do. Sometimes she is disgusted when he slows it down a lot and tries to make sex all emotional and deep.

Dany tells Drogo that she understands that many of the things she just said actually have nothing to do with him, but is more about her and her tendency to put up walls. She is revolted by his vulnerability because she doesn’t want to see it in herself.

In response to her ridiculously bastardly breakdown of their sex life — Drogo raises a brow and is like, “Oh fuck, we doing this now? Okay!” He actually takes off his jacket, pulling off each sleeve before yanking the entire garment off and throwing it on a chair, before he rubs his hands together and cracks his neck.

He tells her that it’s pretty fucking obvious to him that she does not like it when he expresses any sort of emotion that is short of anger, bitterness, or happiness. He gets that she hates it when he gets sad or feels insecure or feels guilt. He agrees that this is completely her fucking problem. It ain’t his problem. He is doing things just fucking fine. She needs to fucking deal.

He tells her that he didn’t realize he was pressuring her into saying yes. He tells her he didn’t realize that he was conveying to her that he thinks his fleshy clit — aka his penis — is making her life. He tells her that’s really good feedback and he will try to be cognizant and knock that shit off.

He tells her that he sometimes feels like he’s in a no-win situation because she is constantly conveying to him that he’s not always doing it for her — but she never fucking lets him do it for her. She is really fucking uptight and controlling. She will not fucking _relax_ enough to let him go down on her. He tells her he’s actually not an idiot, and he generally knows how the female orgasm works. And she fucking always sabotages him — and then punishes him for the limitations she puts down. He tells her that he would _love it_ if she initiates sex more, because sometimes he feels like a fucking clingy sexual assaulter — because sometimes it doesn’t even feel like she wants him at all. He tells her it’s real bullshit that he’s tried to talk about these things with her in the past and because she wasn’t into having a conversation with him, she shut him down. He tells her it’s unfair that everything is always on her terms.

After all of that, Dany says to him, “Hey, do you want to meet my brother?” She doesn’t say this because she wants to distract him or deflect — she fully plans on addressing all of the shit he just brought up. She is saying this first because she suddenly thinks that she’s ready for him to meet her brother.

 

 

  
Missy needs help moving her bed from the old basement apartment and her old couch from her storage unit into her new apartment. She doesn’t want to hire people for just two things, so she asks her brother and she asks Drogo to help her. They are the biggest guys she knows.

Drogo corrects her. He says, “You mean strongest.”

She looks at him blankly. She says, “No, I meant what I said. I meant biggest. I meant most mass.”

Her brother is generally pretty fucking ecstatic that Grey is out of her personal life again — but Mars also does not think their breakup will last. He thinks that his sister has a fucking chronic problem — she’s addicted to shut-mouthed, skinny, socially awkward assholes who talk real white. Mars generally scarfs down the pizza she ordered for him and Drogo, and he taunts her — while her pain is still really raw and fresh.

He’s actually making her laugh. It feels really, really good. He actually grabs her head and tries to force-feed her pizza, smearing hot cheese and marinara all over her face as she tries to fight him off with a hand to the face. He’s trying to feed her because he doesn’t want her to get all anorexic again. He’s saying to her, “Why don’t you put on some Ne-Yo and cry to the radio ‘cause you’re so sick of love songs? Bitches like you _love_ Ne-Yo, Missy.”

She’s trying to punch him because she actually only likes like, _three_ Ne-Yo songs, but he’s got her wrists tied up in his fist, and he’s got his forearm locked against her neck, pressing her into the back of her couch. She’s struggling to speak. She’s saying, “Oh my — _God._ Ne-Yo only — gets ass — ‘cause — he talented.”

“Man, that’s surprisingly superficial coming from you,” Drogo says. “He cute.”

“He five-six,” Mars says, still holding down his sister’s thrashing body with his forearm pressed on her neck. Her face is turning purple. “Something like that. He a shortie.”

“Trey Songz — is — hot.”

“Man,” Drogo says. “I do not like that Fugees sample in that one Trey Songz song. Bitches like Missy love Trey, though he might be a little too sexual for Missy. Missy likes ‘em borderline asexual.”

“Man, get it straight,” says Mars. “The Fugees actually sampled some white lady for Fu-Gee-La. Trey sampled the white lady, not the Fugees.”

“Yo, man, do you really think Trey Songz be fucking listening to old school white lady R&B? Nah, man. He pulled that hook from the Fugees and was like, ‘Oh, damn, you guys didn’t come up with this shit?’ It's like Mario Winans sampling Enya. You think that fucking Mario listens to Enya on his downtime? Nah. He pulled that shit from the Fugees. The Fugees sampled Enya. Mario sampled the Fugees and was like 'Oh, damn, you guys didn't come up with this shit?'”

 

 

  
Drogo gets along marvelously with her brother — and that is not a surprise at all because it completely seemed like Drogo and her brother would be the types to get along with each other.

After Drogo leaves her new apartment, after ensuring that there is no other heavy furniture she needs him to push around, Mars chews on some leftover pizza crust and plainly tells her that she should consider dating a guy like Drogo. Mars' super deep reasons follow thusly:

“He’s handsome. He’s really ripped — guy fucking works out. He gotta good heart. I see how he takes care of you. He ain’t complicated — he ain’t gonna fuck with your head. He friendly and fucking not moody. He ain’t the type to make you cry.”

Missy curls her upper lip up in slight distaste. She says, “Okay, first of all, he _has_ made me cry. Like, multiple times. It’s cool. I love Drogo, but I don’t feel that way about him. And second of all — _man,_ you and I look for really different qualities in men.”

 

 

  
When Missy shows up at work again — a week later — she actually looks amazing — really polished and healthy. Obara and Ygritte took her out to an entire spa day. An entire layer of dead and dull skin was sloughed off by an aggressive employee. Her body was massaged and rubbed down into goo by a strong-handed, no-nonsense woman in her fifties. Missy is so soft and so moisturized and so loose-limbed. They all spent an excessive amount of time talking about self-care. Ygritte said that sometimes she forgets about self-care because she has this idea in her head that moms should be self-sacrificing. Ygritte told them that it’s an ongoing struggle to step out of that myth. All of their capacities to care for other people only expands when they care for themselves.

So Missy drops an exorbitant amount of money to get her curls freshened and to get her cut shaped by a fucking _pro._ She has a nice fringe now. She wears a crisp all-cotton shirt with her charcoal slacks. She wears a new pair of red ballet flats. They are moisture-wicking and odor-absorbing. She’s trying something new. Instead of going on an insane bender and drinking herself stupid and eating a bunch of donuts as she cries in the shower, she’s trying to manage her heartbreak by taking really good care of herself. She’s been eating a lot of whole grains. She’s been doing a lot of cardio. She’s been moisturizing a lot. She went to the eye doctor and got an update on her reading glasses prescription. She bought new glasses and sprung for the fancy anti-glare coating and the fancy super lightweight lens. She bought frames she usually would never buy — like, she usually buys black frames because she’s usually worried her personality is not colorful enough to pull off like, clear glasses like how the kids wear. But she got herself these navy blue ones to jazz it up. She’s been eating a lot of fruit and bought an entire jar of multivitamin gummies.

She gets an, “Oh, damn!” from Osha when Osha arrives at work. Missy hasn’t talked to Grey at all. Grey has been shut in his office on a call. He has been in there all morning. It’s obviously on purpose. He’s obviously avoiding her.

She brushes her hand across the material of her pants as she gets to her feet. She scurries over excitedly to Osha because they haven’t seen each other in a week. They hug, and she says, “Hey, how are you?”

Osha’s smile softens. Osha says, “How are _you?”_ Osha meaningfully tilts her head toward Grey’s closed door. “How’s it going?”

“Oh,” Missy says. “So you know.”

“Only because I’ve known you guys forever.”

Missy nods. She says, “I’m okay. I’m sad, but I’ll be okay.”

 

 

  
Their first real substantial interaction happens at their staff meeting. Because she was gone the previous week, Grey ran the staff meetings. He’s on a bit of autopilot, and there are also hanging threads that need to be picked back up, so that is why he starts to try and run this meeting.

Their first bit of for-real interaction happens because Missandei has to gently tell him that she’d actually prefer to run the meeting. She says, “Pyp caught me up this morning already.”

Grey stares at her, with a lot more tension than is probably normal. He is probably thinking that she is putting him on the spot because she is trying to get back at him — because he’s a real fucking idiot. But that is really his problem. She’s not doing what he thinks she is doing.

The staff thinks that the tension and the long pause is really fucking weird. But Grey is real fucking weird sometimes.

Finally, he clears his throat, and he says, “Of course. Go ahead.”

 

 

  
Drogo completely misses the staff meeting because he’s not a control freak and he doesn’t like waking up early to go sit in a meeting that Missandei can capably run. So he doesn’t get into the office until 10. When he gets there, Missy asks if he has a second. He tells her that for her, he has many seconds. He runs his fingers directly down her spine as she walks them to Grey’s office — she shivers because she doesn’t expect the touch — and then she turns around and playfully swats him. She says, “You!” in this amused exasperation. He is just relieved that she looks so fucking good and that her attitude is so fucking upbeat. He’s just so glad she’s not stewing in a puddle of her own filth.

Grey looks surprised to see them appear in his office. He pushes away from his computer to look at them.

She says, “Sorry, this won’t take long. I just wanted to tell you guys that I’ve thought about it — a lot — and I can commit to staying here at least through the end of the year. That’s enough to finish out most things.” The end of the year is three months away.

“You’re leaving at the start of the year?” Drogo asks, frowning.

She looks surprised by the question. She says, “Oh! I don’t think so? I don’t know. We can reexamine in three months, I mean. I just wanted to tell you guys that I’m not going to leave you in the lurch. I’m not going to suddenly quit, is what I’m telling you guys.”

“Oh my God,” Drogo mutters, immediately reaching out to give her a bone-cracking hug. She kind of squeaks in his arms. She smells like flowers — just really nice. He says, “That’s such a fucking relief, man. I was so afraid you’d torch bridges as you steal clients and steal all the employees and leave us devastated in the wake of your fury.”

“That seems wildly out of character for me to do, Drogo,” she says, starting to hug him back.

“I’m just so glad my life can stay the same for the time being. You are great. Do you want a raise?”

“What?” Grey says, finally speaking. “You can’t just offer people raises on a whim, Drogo.”

“I’m serious though,” Drogo says, letting Missandei go. “She’s been here for more than a year. We’re probably overdue.” He looks at Missy — that little rascal — and he laughs. He says, “You should probably try and negotiate a raise. Like, I’m talking to you as a friend right now. It’s a really good time for you to negotiate a raise because we’re about to sit down and figure out the budget for next year.”

 

 

  
For the foreseeable future, she plans on burying herself in work — but hopefully in a healthy way. She has a lot of breaks — snack breaks and meal breaks — scheduled in. She takes on side work — for the first time ever. It’s really low-key and low pressure. It’s mostly pro bono because she does not need the money. She learned about it through Yara, who turned down the work due to lack of bandwidth. A really cool food justice organization has an afterschool program in South King’s Landing and would like a video made to give an overview of the program. The video would also be used to solicit funding.

She asks Lommy and Jojen if either of them want to do some volunteer work outside of work hours. Lommy does not — and cannot elegantly or clearly express this. He starts going, “Oh, um, I’m busy on those days because — you know — family stuff.”

Missandei does not like being lied to because people are too afraid to tell her the truth. She tells him, “Lom, if you don’t want to, just so say.”

And he says, “Oh, okay.”

And then she looks at him expectantly — because she’s waiting for him to actually say it. She says, “So say so.”

He looks pretty tortured and put on the spot, as he slowly says, “I do not want to . . . help children . . . because the traffic going down there will be bad.” He hangs his head in shame.

She laughs, and she says, “You’re such a dork.”

 

 

  
He finds that he misses her. Just a whole fucking lot. He finds that it’s hard to see her everyday — it’s harder than he thought it’d be. He finds that sometimes he forgets where they are at and he finds himself starting to call out to her to ask her to come over and look at something that he knows she’d find amusing. Sometimes he finds her name on the tip of his tongue, and he has to stutter it to a stop.

She is everywhere. Her warm and alive body continues to inhabit his space. She is actually literally everywhere. Her fingerprints and her influence is over all of the work, so every time he opens something to look at it — he just gets hit with a little bit of pain in the solar plexus — because sometimes what he is looking at is so fucking beautiful that it breaks his heart.

He had to scrub his entire apartment of her because everything about it just makes him so fucking sad. He stripped his bed and threw his sheets away. He almost bought an entirely new mattress because he’s sure that he can still feel her there at night in his bed. He hasn’t been sleeping well at all.

Sometimes he can’t even hold onto why he is doing this to himself. Sometimes he can’t remember how they got to this point and why he thought it was the smart thing to do — because it just hurts anyway. It just hurts no matter what, so maybe he can at least have her while he hurts.

He never does anything about how he feels because he never does anything about how he feels. He is a coward. He already knows — she didn’t have to tell him. He’s read a lot of books about early childhood development over the course of his life — because he has spent a lot of time trying to decode himself. He already knows how early trauma imprints itself on the brain. He already knows that early childhood trauma can reduce the size of the brain cortex, which is responsible for memory, attention, thinking, language, consciousness, the ability to regulate emotions. He knows that children who experience trauma act out in social situations, lack self-confidence, are verbally abusive, blame themselves constantly, and have trouble trusting other people.

He put in so much effort toward working through a lot of his baggage the first time he was with her — and it was so fucking _good_ — he was so fucking _good_ — when they were together. But when she left — his entire fucking world just collapsed in on itself. That was a profound experience, and it changed his life and who he is and what he thinks he’s capable of. He generally does not get better. Maybe he only gets worse. He only feels more fear now — because he just keeps accumulating knowledge about himself and about her. He can’t do anything based on ignorance anymore. He knows it all, already. He knows how it feels to be with her. He knows how it feels to be without her. He knows he freezes up because he is so scared.

And she seems really good without him. She seems really healthy and back on her way to happy. She seems like she’s going to be very okay without him.

 

 

  
Drogo drops his car keys and the plastic bag full of takeout containers on Grey’s kitchen counter. Drogo tells his buddy to come over and eat — which they do, fairly quietly. Drogo tries to keep it light. He talks about work shit — he carries the entire weight of conversation — and when he runs out of work shit to talk about, Drogo mindlessly switches over to Dany and tells Grey all about how nutty Dany can get, but her saving grace is that he happens to find her shit pretty funny. Drogo tells Grey that Dany wants Drogo to meet her brother. And she keeps making it sound really fun. She keeps reminding him that her brother is going to be really racist and call him a savage and imply that he’s genetic predisposed to labor intensive work. Her brother is going to tell Drogo that statistically, his people have low IQs and cannot even be educated. Her brother will tell Drogo that his body is genetically made for violence, but since they live in a culture that does not condone violence — then his body looks like it’s made for full-contact sports. Drogo says that he’s been looking at Dany and all of this prep — and he’s been wondering how this fucking shit is just on the tip of her tongue. He’s been wondering what she sees in him, when she looks at him.

Grey can’t say much in response to this. Grey honestly looks like he’s dying internally — all the time now. Grey just drops his plastic fork down and he says, “I’m sorry.”

At bedtime, when Drogo sees Grey’s bed — which is just crazy and bare — with a bunch of bath towels put down, Grey says, “Sorry. I ordered new sheets after researching for eight hours. They haven’t come yet. You don’t have to stay. I’m okay.”

 

 

  
Having Drogo in his bed helps — as it always tends to. He doesn’t forget that Drogo is there, and when Drogo is there, her absence doesn’t feel as palpable.

In the dark, he whispers out, “Tell me I’m going to be okay.”

Drogo sharply inhales — and then he says, “You’re going to be okay. I _know_ you will. You’re a survivor. You will _be okay.”_

“Oh my _God,_ I miss her so fucking _much.”_

 

 

 

 


	45. Dany is racist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Drogo meets Dany's brother, which goes good! Which is actually terrible for their relationship.

 

 

 

Because the best way she can cope with the absence of him from her personal life is to keep her attention very narrowly focused on specific work tasks, she’s very cordial to him and sometimes even borderline friendly, but not familiar. In short, she is professional and good at compartmentalization. Her ability to seperate how she feels with what she needs to do is partially built on her own resilience, and it is partly built on her feelings of respect and this lingering love of him. She doesn’t want to make his life difficult. She doesn’t want him to feel bad or sad. She thinks that whatever is in her power to ease this for him — she can try her best to be aware of it and to do it. This is why she smiles at him when they accidentally make eye contact throughout the day. This is why she comes and leaves the office with efficiency and also predictability. She knows that he will find the consistency in her routine comforting.

 

 

  
To him, she’s doing such a good job of managing everything that she doesn’t really give him any indication that she is suffering without him. His mind sometimes wanders when he isn’t policing his own thoughts, and sometimes it wonders if he is going through this shittiness alone. Sometimes when he is particularly upset about all of this, he will convince himself that her emotional steadiness probably means that she probably did not love him as much as he thought she might have. And then oftentimes, he realizes his own hypocrisy. He has been saving all of his bad moments for when he is alone, for when he is at home.

It’s been a month, and time — honestly — has just fucking crawled. He basically feels every moment acutely, and it makes him want to gouge his fucking heart out sometimes. Sometimes he feels weak, and he thinks he should just fucking get back together with her and just try and see where it goes — if only to end this pain. But he never pulls the trigger on that. It’s generally just a fantasy. She seems better without him. He is lacking without her. This is probably not a new occurrence. This is probably an aspect of their relationship that has been there from the beginning. Sometimes he tells himself that, in order to be a good guy, he should probably not fuck with the good things she’s got going on just because he’s fucking lonely without her.

 

 

  
“Sometimes I have to pretend these figures are in Monopoly money,” he mutters, flipping through tabs on the spreadsheet in front of him. “So I don’t go fucking insane.” He means that he keeps begrudgingly falling face-first into conventional success, and he is the kind of person that feels a lot of unease in that because there will always be a part of him that feels he’s being fraudulent — that he’s stealing people’s money and they are going to find out that he doesn’t actually know what the fuck he is doing soon enough.

He says to her, “How about ten percent?” She’s sitting at his side table. He’s at his desk in front of his computer. Drogo is standing behind her, massaging her shoulders. They are trying to figure out the smartest and most ethical-but-not-stupid things to do with all of this excess.

The staff are all getting bonuses and salary bumps. Osha has been wanting to spend more and more time at home with her kid — so Meera will probably get a promotion to take over some of Osha’s work while Osha goes down to half-time. They might hire someone new — maybe business dev — or maybe on the creative and production side. But the thing is — what he and Drogo lack — is kind of like, far-reaching business vision. They like, begrudgingly take on work sometimes. They generally choose work that they find interesting. They have generally been just lucking out massively, that it’s been profitable. They probably need to plug this hole before they go off hiring another creative. Hiring another creative would probably just be reaching into a familiar well and pulling out a really familiar bucket of water.

“Cost of living is fine,” Missandei says.

“Christ, why do you hate money?” Drogo mutters.

They are talking about her raise. It’s the most bizarre negotiation. Because Grey keeps pushing it up and she keeps pushing it back down. It’s happening all backwards. She doesn’t want a raise because she doesn’t need the money. She’d rather the money go toward something else — something mildly altruistic. Like, maybe they should consider some equipment upgrades. Maybe they can do what he hates — a morale boosting company retreat. Maybe they can try something new.

He doesn’t know how to fucking incentivize her to stay — if not with money. He doesn’t feel comfortable offering her a bigger share of the company. He also does not want a competitor to offer her double her fucking salary and then watch her go, “Okay!” and then bounce the fuck on out.

He also does not want to do a fucking retreat. He sees no point in it at all. He ends up saying, “I’ll consider the retreat. Just take ten percent, okay? We had a really good year. And this isn’t a charity. You don’t need to donate anything back to us.”

“Agree to the retreat. And I’ll take the ten percent increase.”

“Man, I don’t think I really need for you to agree to the increase,” he tells her. “I think I can just push more money into your bank account each week.”

“It’s just a quick trip!” she says, kind of shouting now. “Those kids work hard!”

He shouts back at her. He says, “I really _don’t_ want to shut the office down randomly for a couple of days just so I can sit around a fire in the woods somewhere and listen to those kids complain about how their mom didn’t love them enough — and that is why they went to art school!”

“Oh my God, get it straight,” she snaps. “Sometimes kids study art because their parents died horrifically when the kids were at a young age.”

He stares at her in shock.

“What the fuck is going on right now?” Drogo mutters, playing with her hair and massaging her scalp now. Grey wishes Drogo would actually just stop.

“It was a joke!” Missandei says, rolling her eyes at him. “Sheesh.”

 

 

  
She has Pyp plan the retreat even though Grey didn’t explicitly say that he’s on board. She does not care about his buy-in. He is wrong about things a lot of the time.

Pyp resentfully says that he’s not an event planner. She can clearly see that some of Pyp’s shitty attitude is something he has inherited from Grey. She reminds Pyp that he’s a project manager, right? And this a project. Manage it.

 

 

  
They all grab lunch together, and Dany’s brother looks like her — and he is actually very pleasant, polite, and friendly. When they meet for the first time, Drogo is searching Viserys’ face for _something_ — but Viserys just smiles this bright, toothy smile and ducks in slightly to shake Drogo’s hand with enthusiasm. The guy says, “It’s so great to meet you! I’ve been really looking forward to this!”

And then they spend the entire lunch having a really smooth series of conversations as Dany sits back and occasionally fills in words and sentences when Viserys has a hard time recalling some detail. Viserys asks Drogo many questions about Drogo’s life — where he’s from, where he was born, where he went to school, how he likes his job — Viserys says that his job sounds really amazing and fulfilling.

Viserys also spends a fair bit of time talking about how he currently works as a bank teller — and it’s a bit of a fall from grace, but it’s really fine and healthy for him to be in a low pressure situation. Viserys tells Drogo about how he is an addict and how his addiction just ruined his life and hurt all of the people around him and the people he loves — people like his sister, Dany. Viserys smiles at Dany softly, and he says that he’s trying to be the kind of big brother that she deserves — but the thing is, she deserves so much. Viserys refers to the terrible things he has done in the past and how he feels such regret over so much of it. Viserys says, “When you hate yourself — inside — it’s hard for that not to manifest outward. But you know what? It’s unfair to force other people to bear the burden of your self-hatred.”

Drogo is kind of charmed — he can’t help but be a little bit charmed. He has to fight down these thoughts that come unbidden, as his experience and reality with Viserys is completely defying the expectations that Dany set.

 

 

  
Later, in the car, when he cautiously tells her that her brother was very nice, she says, “Yeah, he can be like that sometimes.”

She is tense. Typically in the past, she shuts down and gets angry — and she says nothing. But today, she is trying to push for more. So she tells Drogo that her brother can be very charismatic. She shrugs tightly. And then she says, “My experience with him has been varied.”

He says, “I’m sorry, Dany.” And he really _means_ it. He means that he’s sorry that her family life and her relationship with her brother have been so complicated and challenging. He means that he has some conceit of this, because sometimes he has these hardships with his sisters, too.

But she snaps. She says, “What do you even fucking _know_ about me?”

And he is bewildered and shocked at how her mood has turned on a dime. When he recovers, he tells her that he’s known her for a long time now — he doesn’t claim to know everything about her. But he knows some things. He knows, in a general sense, that it sucks to be made to feel small.

She just starts ranting on about how he doesn’t know anything. He is not a very observant person, and _of course_ he is the kind of person that is susceptible to her brother’s charms. All Drogo fucking needs are these strategic beats that mirror how he feels inside. All he fucking needs are compliments and also fake secret-sharing. She tells Drogo that he lacks the ability to look deeper at things. He lacks the ability to critically think. He just lacks depth. And that is the sort of thing that cannot be taught. She says, “You either are or you aren’t. You always wonder why Grey is so much better than you are. And I have refrained from telling you. But this is why. Grey is smarter than you are. He wouldn’t be so fucking charmed by my brother like a fucking baby.”

 

 

  
He quietly tells her that he’s actually not as stupid as she thinks he is. He tells her that Grey is fucking wonderful and that he loves Grey — but he does not want to be like Grey — or like her. He does not want to look at the world with such wariness and just put on all of this armor all the time because all they ever do is prepare for all the ways life will fuck them over. He tells her that this is no way to live — and also that he can only treat people based on what they give to him. He’s not going to be a fucking asshole to her brother based on prejudices and based on what he has learned from her. He’s not going to be an asshole to her brother until her brother messes with him.

He tells her that she’s called him stupid before — many times — but this may be the first time that he actually believes that she really means it. She really _does_ think he’s stupid and inferior to her. He asks her, “Why is all of this terrible shit about me and who I am always on the tip of your tongue? How come it’s always so easy for you to bring it all up to the surface when you get angry with me? How come you talk about my family the way you do? What is _so bad_ about my sisters being married and having fucking kids? Those are my fucking nieces and nephews.” He stops short of fucking accusing her of internalizing bullshit racism — because he is still unsure and he gives the people he cares for a lot of leeway on this shit when he really shouldn’t.

She is largely unaware that he is starting to feel this way.

 

 

  
Grey asks Drogo how meeting Dany’s brother went because Grey is trying to work on being a better friend to all of his friends — and Drogo rolls his eyes and says, _“Great._ I learned that I’m dealing with a fucking psycho. And before you jump to conclusions — I am talking about Dany, not her brother.”

 

 

  
Drogo throws his bare foot up on the L part of Grey’s sectional and he reaches out to grab the open bottle of beer that Grey is offering him. They’ve eaten dinner. They are chilling with some music right now. They have two joint playlists that they curate together and an entire system where they shift songs off of the main playlist to the repository playlist so the main playlist doesn’t get bloated. The main playlists contains eighty percent new shit that they come across that they like and twenty percent old jams that they randomly rediscover and remember that they love.

Drogo likes listening to music and talking over why he put a certain song on the playlist — and he likes listening to Grey do the same. Dany isn’t into his kind of music because she’s fucking white and uppity as fuck and likes elitist white people music. Out loud, to Grey, he wonders why he has to fucking give up everything about himself — why that’s on him. He has already adjusted _so much_ to his fucking environment. He already adjusts _so much_ in his speech and his clothes and the way he carries himself in order not to fucking alienate their clients — he already spends fucking twelve hours a day not being completely himself — and so how is he gonna be fucking told he is still not fucking _good enough_ on his downtime, too?

He says, “I’m fucking _sick_ of this _shit._ I’m fucking sick of listening to the kids’ fucking tunes all the fuck time in the office. I’m fucking sick of their fucking hipster shit and the intellectual, esoteric rap. I’m sick of fucking _Jojen_ implying I ain’t down because I haven’t heard of fucking random underground rap artist. It’s like — the fucking _audacity_ of this white child! And why are we always voting on shit! Why is this a fucking democracy! We fucking pay their salaries, so I should be able to tell them to shut off their fucking annoying singer-songwriter noise whenever _the fuck_ I feel like it!”

Grey clears his throat, leaning back on one elbow. He’s lying down on his couch, on the long side of the L. Into the mouth of his beer bottle, he says, “Young people are annoying.”

“Don’t defend them!” Drogo snaps.

Grey laughs. He says, “I don’t think I did, though?”

 

 

  
Grey has not been as tortured about this lately that much. Perhaps part of it is that he’s been with Missandei for so long, and she’s not white — she’s like him. Maybe another part of it is that he didn’t have his parents or a community for as long as Drogo did — so this strict adherence and this deep love of culture probably didn’t grab onto him in the way that it did for Drogo. Maybe another part of it is that he’s just not as strong or as clear as Drogo is on this stuff. Like, he goes to concerts with Dany all the time and generally feels awed and stunned at how other people live. He tells Drogo that honestly, he loves orchestral music. He is way fucking white sometimes. It kind of gives him a complex sometimes. But then it’s like, why are all these great and comfortable things qualified as white and why are all the hardships and troubling things segregated to those who are marginalized?

Grey says, “But it’s not lost on me — why all the good things are qualified as white. And it’s not lost on me — that white people have been very receptive to my work, and that is why my career is the way it is. And when I’m home in the Summer Isles — man, it’s fucking vibrant and it’s so fucking _alive._ And there are artists there just making beautiful as fuck shit. And no one knows their names at all.”

He says, “Sometimes I don’t think we ever change — as hard as we try to change. I’m still the kind of person that is obedient, quiet, and generally inoffensive. I’m a pretty safe bet for certain people because I compromise a lot of my identity. But you don’t. I really admire that.”

 

 

  
In bed, Drogo stretches out and accidentally smacks Grey in his cheek as he yawns. He says, “Goodnight, bud. I love you.”

“I love you, too, man,” Grey says.

 

 

  
Instead of wondering out loud if they should fucking break up, Drogo tiredly asks Dany if she still wants to keep going with this — if she still wants to continue laboring under this. He tells her that he always used to have the impression that relationships are easier than this. They aren’t simple — but surely the good times must outweigh the bad.

He tells her, “Man, you’re kind of low-key racist. Like, for real, man. This might be a dealbreaker for me.”

She says, “Is this because I told you that Dothraki food smells kind of like dog food?” On her part, she’s actually forcing herself to not be incredibly defensive and push out straight denial on this. She’s trying to keep even and hear him out.

“Oh, shit,” he says. “I forgot about that. And no — it _wasn’t_ about that, but thanks for adding to the mental list I have of crazy mean shit you have said to me.”

 

 

  
Missandei doesn’t want to be a dick, but one very broad and general truism she has found is that the smaller the amount a client pays for work — the pickier and more nightmarish they can be. The nonprofit is paying just about zero dollars for her work — and so they are not really valuing her time at all?

When she and Jojen arrive at the school to shoot an after-school cooking class, they learn that they can’t actually do their jobs — because only two of the kids have the release form signed. The kids were not prepped at all, so they freak out when they see Jojen’s camera and start loudly telling the coordinator that they do not want to be recorded. The coordinator is a fucking load of garbage because when Missy presses the woman for information — for _why_ none of the releases were signed even though this shoot was scheduled weeks ago — the piece of shit coordinator is unconcerned and even annoyed that Missy is in her face. She tells Missy to just shoot at liberty and they can crop out of the kids that don’t have releases signed.

Missy angrily walks out right after that, taking Jojen with her.

 

 

  
Missy says, “Sorry, Jo-jo,” as she stands in line with him and his equipment. She is buying him dinner as repayment for the hour that he spent in traffic getting to the school. He even took off from work a little early to do this.

“It happens, Missy.”

“What you want?”

“Beef plate, please.”

 

 

  
Drogo randomly freaked out on the kids for their taste in music for no reason, and as a result, the studio has been filled with a lot of bass in the last week.

She runs into Grey at the coffee thermos. His back is to her, and the music is kind of loud so he doesn’t hear her footsteps. He’s also softly singing along to himself as he refills his coffee cup — and of course, the lyrics are super suggestive and kind of romantic. Mostly stuff about how he’d do anything to make his girl feel alright. Mostly stuff about putting hands on bodies to make the both of them feel alive.

It’s just great. Missy thinks it’s _just awesome_. She is pretty much never going to get over him. She is pretty much just going to be in love with him forever.

She’s trying not to startle him, so she says, “Hey.”

He swivels his head around in surprise. He says, “Oh! Hi, Missandei.”

 

 

 

 

 


	46. Yara sleeps with Obara's sister

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yara is also terrible to women and also a commitment-phobe. This is why she gets along so well with Drogo and Grey! Missy gets hotter. Grey stays dumb. Dany tries to figure out just how racist she is. Drogo is same ol' same ol'.

 

 

  
Yara is trying to quit smoking completely, but her resolve is just a little bit weaker whenever she drinks. When she drinks, she convinces herself that she’s a social smoker. It’s funny, she actually contorted her body and pushed it out onto Obara’s fire escape so that she doesn’t have to go down ten floors just to have a smoke break. Yara is by herself, sitting out on metal and a few discarded plants by herself, looking out at the cityscape as she blows out smoke clouds and sucks down a cigarette.

She stubs out her cigarette on metal, and she holds the butt in her hand so she can deposit it in the garbage. She likely reeks of smoke because when she crawls back inside the apartment, Obara, standing among a bunch of their friends, is giving Yara a look of disapproval like such a mom.

Yara smirks at her friend before she drops the cigarette in the garbage bin underneath the sink. It’s after she washes her hands, after she wipes her hands on the seat of her jeans, after she digs around boldly in the fridge for a snack, after she pulls out a styrofoam container full of really cold dumplings and starts shoving them into her mouth that Tyene — Obara’s younger sister — sidles up to her and says, “Can I have one, too?”

Yara’s known Tyene for years — almost as long as she’s known Obara. She knew Tyene during the three years Tyene was in a long term relationship with some guy Obara was not impressed by.

There is something different here, tonight. There is a different feeling and a different intent. Yara looks at Tyene’s face, and her eyes slightly narrow. She holds out the styrofoam container, now only half full of dumplings.

Tyene smiles at her before taking one.

 

 

  
They slam the door open to Tyene’s apartment — a slightly rundown studio with a popcorn ceiling in an old building. All of Tyene’s shit looks like she bought it in an airport gift shop of ethnic wares. There are a lot of patterns and a lot of smells.

Yara gets pushed down to these sheets that are fuchsia and floral — on a bed that probably has not been made in weeks. Her shirt gets pulled off — and then her bra — before their mouths fuse back together.

The kissing is nice — it’s fun and sexy — and Yara still goes, “Whoa,” when Tyene’s hand skips a few steps and digs into Yara’s pants. Yara twists her hips and she says, “Babe, can you wash your hands?” And then right after, she says, “Do you have a condom on you?” She means she wants a condom that she can cut up. She figures that Tyene probably has one because Tyene is pretty straight. Yara figures she needs one because fucking a straight girl is like, one degree from fucking a dude.

Tyene laughs — because she thinks Yara is making a joke about the condom. Tyene is pretty sure she’s not going to get pregnant from this.

But Yara says, “No really.”

 

 

  
Tyene’s lack of experience in having sex with another woman is blaring out at Yara. Yara has to guide and teach a fair bit. Tyene is receptive and eager and open.

Yara has these self-sabotaging, self-destructive tendencies. She is inordinately attracted to straight-ish women because those kinds of women are typically not in the kind of mindset or place in life to want all of these things from Yara that she cannot give. They might tell her that they can easily fall in love with her — but the euphoria tends to go away after the initial rush and happiness that comes with sex fades. Yara likes straight women because they bring a certain naivete, and they lack strong conviction and strong sexual identity politics. So they don’t challenge Yara and call her out on her inconsistent bullshit — because they just don’t know what they should be angry about.

Yara is self-destructive in the sense that she is fucking one of her best friend’s straight sister. Like, this is very clear. She is not even that drunk. She is just tired — of the routine that her life has settled into. She has Theon, so she has to keep a regular schedule. It is completely at odds with who she believes herself to be, and she’s been having a difficult time being so domesticated. Maybe this is why she is doing this.

She says, “Babe,” because she doesn’t want to say Tyene’s name. She touches Tyene’s bare shoulder and she says, “Babe — move over.”

 

 

  
The next time Dany sees her brother, she has to drive four hours to the house that he lives in with his girlfriend, Amy. Dany’s checking up on him, and she is also trying to assess how his life is actually going.

His current life and his surroundings are ridiculous. Amy like kitsch, so the coasters that they are putting their glasses of lemonade on have inspirational quotes on them. There are lot of inspirational quotes in the house they are renting. There is a wooden sign that says, “Live, love, laugh,” next to the front door.

Dany’s brother used to be an executive working on the fortieth floor of a high-rise.

Right now, she is sitting on a floral sofa in the house that he lives in.

Viserys runs his fingers through his light hair, and they make small talk for a few minutes. They talk about the weather and their respective work commutes for a while. And then like he’s dropping the most blase bomb ever, Viserys says to her, “The Dothraki. He reminds me of someone.” A grin spreads over his face.

She does not bite. She just sits there and waits for him to finish his observation dramatically.

Sure enough, he says, “He reminds me a lot of the other one — the one who is dead. Same nationality, same general bulky look, same general clunky speech, same exact person.” He smiles. “I’ve never understood the appeal of them. Not even one bit.”

She doesn’t say anything for a long time. She’s thinking some things over. But when she finally does speak, she says, “You mean ethnicity.”

His eyes narrow at her.

“Aggo was born here. Drogo wasn’t,” she explains. “So he and Drogo are actually not of the same nationality. You meant ethnicity.” She leans forward and picks up her glass of lemonade. Understanding still has not appeared on her brother’s face, so she says, “Dothraki are an ethnicity, not a nationality. They have no country.”

 

 

  
Missandei has never been known for being athletic. She’s been known for having a pretty solid metabolism, a penchant for walking a lot, and — usually — a sensible diet. But now that she has a lot of time to hang out by herself — well, she has a lot of time to work out. She often goes to bed with her muscles warm. She often walks up with her muscles aching the way that her heart aches. She feels strong as shit. Her body is starting to look sleek and tight as shit.

Obara keeps calling it revenge body. Missy keeps correcting Obara and saying that she is not vengeful. She just wants to be able to fucking beat the shit out of like, looters or monsters in a post-apocalyptic world. She just remembers how it felt after she lost her job — how she could barely support the clothes on her body because she was so weak. She just _believes_ that she can be _better_ this time around.

Grey completely notices the small changes — because he’s seen her naked body in detail and has obsessed over it — _a lot._ Drogo notices because he generally always notices. Jojen and Yoren and Lommy and Pyp and Ernie — the two days a month he is actually there — are not as observant about the minute physical changes in her body — but they do notice the change in how she carries herself. It’s hard to describe and hard to pinpoint — but there’s something in the way she moves that all the men interpret as a little darker and touch more sexual.

In truth, this change has come about because Missandei is now almost one-hundred percent sure that her ankle is not going to spontaneously cave in on itself and twist and make her bite floor. Her calves are so _strong_ now. She’s been walking in her sensible heels with such confidence and competence. Also, her posture has been nice and supported and straight because she’s been doing squats and has never been more aware of her posture. Her lack of slouch makes her butt and her breasts naturally pop more.

She is largely ignorant to the way the guys have been looking at her, because they are generally pretty discreet.

 

 

  
He tells her that they can have the retreat whenever they want. He does not plan on going. He tells this to her in a really casual way — as if he actually thinks he’s gonna get away with it — get away with his disengagement.

She says, “It doesn’t work if you’re not there. Then it gives others the option to opt out and _not_ take this seriously.”

He acts really blase and as if he thinks this is reasonable, as he says, “I don’t want to be there, though.”

She says, “Oh, so when you came up to me telling me you had a compromise, you actually meant that you’re bringing me more of the same bullshit that you always bring, but you’re telling me it’s new because you think I’m stupid and will just go along with it.” She smiles at him to soften the words a lot. She smiles at him so that he knows that she’s not trying to be coded with him. She’s not secretly talking about their relationship out in the open at work like this. She’s talking about work. She says, “Jesus, would you just come, Grey?” And then she stutters out a choked kind of laugh — and it’s a real laugh that continues to spill forward, after she gets past the initial surprise of it.

He’s trying not to smile at her. He’s trying not to let her do this to him — be all fucking cute. He generally shakes his head and says, “Stop it.”

She says, “Sorry!” before she clears her throat. “Okay, so will you just participate? We know you’re eventually going to cave because I have a bunch of studies and a bunch of research that backs up this. Ultimately, this is about working better together — and you love optimization. Ultimately, you don’t want to do this because it makes you feel vulnerable, and you don’t want the kids you see you like that. But you need to get the fuck over that if you want us to work better together. So I’m asking you — do you want to be efficient or do you want to preserve your pride?”

“Oh, _damnnn!”_ Osha says, not pausing in her steps as she walks by Grey’s open office door and catches the tail-end of Missandei’s little speech.

 

 

  
Sometimes Dany wonders if she keeps laboring under this difficult relationship with Drogo because she’s in too deep — she has already put in so much time and energy and care into it that it might be wasteful to just walk away from it. But on the other hand, if she was business-minded about this, sometimes it’s better to cut losses now rather than file bankruptcy later.

They are just so different that they just might be doomed together.

Nevertheless, she makes herself go over to his apartment at midnight — after she finishes her work day — and she starts pounding coffee so she can stay awake to have a conversation with him. She gets up at four in the morning. He gets up at nine o’clock. His schedule is a lot more flexible than hers — but she supposes that’s not something she can hold against him. If she doesn’t talk to him at midnight, then she just generally never talks to him during the work week.

She says to him, “So tell me why you think I’m racist.”

He says, “Because you kind of are.”

Honestly — she’s trying to be really cool about this. But that word actually is like nails on a fucking chalkboard to her — it is so at odds with how she sees herself. But she is probably being — like how he likes to say — ‘super white’ about this.

 

 

  
They learn fairly quickly that that they each have fairly different definitions of what racism is. She generally likes to conflate it up and attribute it to like, death and slavery. He generally shrinks it down because he is very sensitive about it. For him, it was like when he went to Tyrion’s and Sansa’s wedding and saw that he, Grey, and Missy were the only people of color there and it made him wonder why the _fuck_ he is friends with Tyrion because Tyrion is probably racist.

Dany asks if it that isn’t a reflection of Tyrion’s socioeconomic status. Drogo is disgusted that she is playing devil’s advocate and asks her if she really thinks that race can ever be removed from class. Based on years of having the conversation shifted by white friends enough times that he no longer has that many white friends — he pre-emptively tells her he’s really not in the fucking mood to talk about the white working class poor.

She tells him, “Can you stop being an asshole? I’m actually trying to talk to you right now.”

He says to her, “Can you stop trying to police my tone? I’m sorry I generally get so angry and upset when I talk about this. I just don’t fucking know how to remove myself from it and talk about it intellectually with you as if I _don’t give a fuck.”_

She says, “Okay, fair. I get very angry too, when you tell me to calm down, and I am not even upset.”

 _“Again,_ Dany, I don’t really want to be talking about your woman shit right now. I don’t want to start a convo about race and have it end about how you are a fucking woman.”

 

 

  
Yara almost flips a coin to choose the friend that she will confide in. She ends up actively picking Missandei though, because Missandei is probably the most emotionally intelligent of all of her friends.

Yara tells Missy that she totally slept with Tyene accidentally — except like, it happened maybe six additional times after the initial accident. And now Tyene is wanting Yara for other things besides sex — like she wants Yara as a dinner companion and as a movie date.

Yara just doesn’t know how to get these bitches to stop falling in love with her all the time. She asks Missy, “Why am I so loveable?”

Missandei laughs. She asks, “So — what do you want? Do you want for this to be something more than just sex? Or do you just want to talk out with me the nicest but clearest way to communicate to her that you aren’t interested in a relationship?” And then Missy rolls her eyes. She is being a tad self-centered as she adds, “Oh my God, is this why you’re confiding in me? Because I am _the bitch_ that was always forcing Grey into being my dinner companion?” She starts chuckling a little bit. Because at this point, it can be something that is sort of funny. He just wanted sex! And she wanted to consume his entire soul so that he can live inside of her forever!

“Babe, no, I didn’t even think of that,” Yara says. “But now that you mention it, your experience does make you a really good source for dos and don’ts.”

 

 

  
Yara tells Missy that she would really love it if she would just _stop_ messing around with straight girls. She would love it if she could stop herself from being an experiment for straight girls. It would be great if she would just fucking date a staunch lesbian who always knew she was a lesbian, who has never had sex with a man once in her life. That would be the shit. Like, really healthy and mature and stuff for Yara.

Yara reminds Missy that she tried a relationship before — with Ros — and that ended pretty much because Yara was an asshole. But Yara was also kind of right. Yara ended up being just a dalliance. Ros is married to a boring dude and has kids now. That _really was_ what Ros wanted in the end for herself. Yara was right. So maybe she should trust her gut.

“The gut that tells you to stop dating straight girls?” Missy asks dryly. “Or the gut that has been telling you to sleep with your friend’s sister?”

Yara groans at the mention of Obara. She’s not altogether sure how Obara’s going to react because neither of them have a precedence for this — female best friend sleeping with sister that has generally been known for being interested in men — but maybe Obara will just fucking lose her shit and never want to be friends ever again, devastating Yara because she’s a fucking moron who just can’t get her emotional shit together. “She’s going to hate me.”

“No, she’s not,” Missandei says. “But she’ll be hurt if she finds out and feels like you purposely kept this from her like you think there’s something to hide. She might be angry if you mess with her sister’s head and string her along when you actually have no interest in anything more than just casual sex — and _again,_ wow, thanks for coming to me with this. I feel terrible right now.”

Yara laughs and then reaches out to touch Missandei’s hand with her fingertips. She doesn’t touch Missandei’s face like the guys do, because she knows that Missy has carefully applied makeup there.

 

 

  
The guilt of surviving and the guilt of success generally hangs over her head all the time — an ingrained part of who she is. But it comes out full-force, in the form of unending patience for this nonprofit that helps at-risk youth by teaching these assholes how not to kill themselves slowly on fast food. Missandei goes back to the cooking class with Jojen another day, after going over things for the billionth time with the staff.

And it’s _still_ a shitshow. Half the kids didn’t sign the release and when called out on it, they started telling their instructors to just text them the night before to remind them next time, because their teacher clearly has all of the time in the world to do this.

The kids are varied and beautiful — photogenic like how nearly all kids are. They have this raw edge of insecurity to them. The boys are making Missy think that this must have been like what Drogo and what Mars were like when they were this age — just a lot of effort at looking disaffected and capable beyond their years — just a lot of cockiness to hide how they really feel. The kids are generally awful and won’t give her direct eye contact because the camera makes them so uncomfortable, but she still feels sweet on them anyway.

 

 

  
Jojen likes chicken, so Missy takes him to the chicken place that she had a fight with Drogo in, for dinner. The chicken there is very, very good. Jojen starts to rip apart the carcass right away because he’s ravenous. He’s not really used to shooting food. All of the food made him hungry. She laughs and she tells him that back in the day, Grey and Drogo used to spend _hours_ shooting food and then not eating it — and both of those guys are obsessed with consuming calories. She tells Jojen that humans develop a tolerance or a perseverance for many things, given enough practice.

“That honestly sounds — so freaking awesome,” Jojen says. “It must’ve been great to visit so many different places.”

“It had its pros and cons,” Missy says. “But yeah, overall it was great.” Her greasy fingers are covered in chicken as she continues picking apart the hot meat. She asks, “Is that something you’re interested in? Traveling more for work?”

“I think so,” he says, shrugging. “Not sure. Never thought about it really.”

 

 

  
Pyp rented a house inland, rather isolated on farmland. There’s one grocery store about ten minutes into town. This was done purposefully so they aren’t tempted to go out to a bar and not engage with one another.

They close the office on Monday and Tuesday. They drive down together on Sunday evening. Meera has a blanket hugged against her body when they pick her up — and Pyp laughs and kind of teases her for the safety blanket. She defensively tells him that she likes it for long car rides.

It takes a few hours to get to the house. The first night is chill and just dinner and hanging out. Missandei catches Drogo rubbing his hands vigorously up and down Grey’s arms. She catches Drogo telling Grey that it’s going to be okay — and she rolls her eyes because they are so fucking dramatic, and Grey is acting like he’s about to be waterboarded.

 

 

  
She and the staff pretty much watch in awe and occasionally help as Grey and Yoren make dinner from the food they randomly bought at the grocery store. Yoren is also a really solid cook. When Lommy asks Grey if Grey could use help with anything, Grey says no, he doesn’t need help. And then Lommy insists that he can like, cut up an onion at the very least. Lommy is proactive and takes a knife and starts to awkwardly dice up an onion.

And Grey totally freaks out a little bit because it’s not precise enough and it’s not how he’d do it. He starts to backseat drive the shit out of Lommy, whose cuts worsen the more nervous he gets. The rest of them are pretty much just laughing at this and not helping.

And then it shifts. Grey’s voice softens as he pulls the knife out of Lommy’s hand, honing it real quick with a steel. He says, “It’s probably too dull,” to save some of Lommy’s dignity — the dignity that Grey actually just stripped. And then he says, “Okay, so try choking up on the knife by a lot, like this. You’ll have better control. And try radial cuts like this, it’ll be faster. And tuck your fingers back like this so you don’t cut yourself.”

This makes her remember how he used to be with Pod. Before he was responsible for so many people’s livelihood, he was actually a really patient teacher.

 

 

 

 


	47. Meera ships Grey and Missy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The company retreat goes better than Grey expects --- yet he still manages to make a woman cry. It's a talent. Meera just believes in true love.

 

 

 

Missy didn’t hire a facilitator because she knows that would push Grey too far out of his comfort zone — having an outsider that he does not trust come in to tell him how to better do his job. That’s actually not the reality of how a good facilitator works, but Missy knows that’s how his brain works. So she is facilitating. She’s done this before at her old job, for other departments and teams, though. Here, she has to be careful to take her facilitator hat on and off clearly so that things don’t get muddled.

They have an agenda that she and Pyp wrote together. Everyone — including Drogo — appear in the living room of the rental at 9 a.m. sharp. There, Missy makes it clear that this is designed for them all to have some fun with each other — but a lot of work is going to get done over the next day. She goes over the entire schedule with them, which ends at 6 p.m., at which time they’ll have dinner together and will just hang out and have free time for the rest of the night.

They break for breakfast after she goes over the agenda.

 

 

  
The thing is — she’s been hearing him and she’s been paying attention. Business keeps growing, and growing really fast. Their strength is, overwhelmingly, the video production work. That is what Grey and Drogo know like the backs of their hands. A secondary strength is the visual design arm that had to be built a year into the business out to support the production work, but it ended up expanding into its own thing. They are also very good at launching creative go-to-market campaigns.

Flaws and weakness include everything that is not creative work. They do not even have a dedicated sales or biz dev person. Grey and Drogo do too much of that work — and it’s not their strongest skillset, though they have been more than capable. As the company continues to grow though, it’s completely unsustainable for Grey and Drogo to keep doing this. She suspects that they need to hire someone for this — Grey needs to cede more control — which will be very hard because he created this with Drogo from the ground up.

He also keeps yelling at the kids. It affects them more than they let on.

This actually comes out really fast. She has them all write down what they love about work. Then she asks them to write down what can be improved about work.

She reads these shuffled answers from anonymized pieces of paper, though since it’s a small staff and they all know one another pretty well, it’s sometimes very easy to guess who wrote what. In general, everyone loves the opportunity to make just epic shit. They love working with her, Grey, and Drogo. They are happy with their salaries.

In general, they feel micromanaged sometimes. They don’t feel trusted all the time. They feel like they get talked down to sometimes. They feel like they don’t get enough feedback because of the rapid production schedule, so it’s hard to know how to improve sometimes. Reading from a piece of paper that was clearly written by Lommy, Missy says, “Sometimes it feels like we only get told when we do something wrong or dumb. We never hear when we do something well or smart.”

 

 

  
Drogo is actually getting a lot out of these sessions. He’s learning a shit ton about how his behavior has these unwitting effects.

For Grey, all of his worst nightmares are coming true. He really _is_ listening to all of the kids express this desire for _more_ coddling. They _really_ want him to make them feel better about their mistakes. They _really_ want him to tell them good job all the time, like he doesn’t have better things to do.

 

 

  
After lunch, she calls him out in front of everyone for his shitty attitude. Everyone has been great and really engaged with the process except for him. So she says, “Can you tell us what it is about this that makes you so angry?”

Grey says, “I’m not angry.” He’s holding himself back — because he generally holds back the full force of his thoughts until he actually gets angry, and then he unleashes it all at once. Right now, he just has his arms crossed over his chest, and he’s just shrugging.

She says, “I can tell that you disagree with a lot of things that have been said. That’s totally fine and expected. But can you talk a little bit about what you are disagreeing with and why you disagree with it?”

He’s staring at her. Because although she has said nothing inflammatory at all — and that was intentional — she managed to say things that are really starting to piss him off. She can do this because she knows him so well.

He says, “Can I talk to you in private real quick?”

Everyone kind of tenses up. Because they are expecting a fight to happen right in front of their faces. But she just smiles at Grey. She says, “Okay. Five minutes.” To Pyp, she says, “Come get us in five minutes, no matter what, okay?”

Pyp glumly says, “Oh, great. Okay.”

 

 

  
Out on the deck, he asks her what she is trying to do and why she is trying to put him on blast in front of the entire staff. He’s been good. He’s been going along with everything. He fucking made the staff lunch like he is their live-in cook. What the fuck more is expected from him?

She doesn’t want to fight with him. She’s probably had enough fights with him to last an entire lifetime and then some. She is just brutally honest because she thinks that it will save them time, and he might be able to appreciate it. She says, “I want you to tell them about where you come from and what drives you to do what you do — and why it makes you the way that you are. I know that you will never become the kind of person that will start doling out empty compliments. I don’t think they are actually asking this from you. I think they are asking for something else, but they cannot put their fingers on the pulse of it. I think if they know who you are, it won’t hurt them so much when you get upset with them over their mistakes. I think if they know who you are — they will work _so much harder_ for you. I think that they already love you, and they don’t even know the specific reasons why they love you. This will be how you retain staff. This will be how you get loyalty. You already pay them a really good wage. The missing piece is feeling that it’s not just transactional.”

He sighs and shakes his head. He says, “Well, fuck.”

 

 

  
Missandei is magical. This is basically what everyone thinks when they come back before the five minutes are up and Grey is not like, a festering pimple with a shit attitude. His participation becomes authentic, and it becomes real. He starts to tell them all the things that they do that just drive him batshit insane because he’s a control freak whose parents died when he was very young, so he had to raise himself up. Like, Lommy always says, “I know,” whenever he gets caught in a mistake. And it’s like, if he already knew, then why the fuck was the mistake made in the first place? Grey talks about how Meera’s tendency to say, “Whatevs,” at the end of her mundane sentences like, “We could make it blue or whatevs,” makes him want to beat the shit out of her because if she doesn’t give enough of a fuck to have a strong opinion, then get the fuck out already.

He actually expects them all to start crying over it — over all of these things they do that trigger him — because he expects for them to be fragile crybabies all the time.

But actually, they are kind of awed. They didn’t realize all of these things were grating on Grey’s nerves so much. It’s totally easy to stop saying “I know” and to stop saying, “Whatevs.” These are actually just nervous verbal ticks and not how they actually feel. They don’t feel passive or uncaring. They actually feel terrible when they make mistakes because they don’t want to let him down because they just want to do the very best for him all the time because it’s such a big deal and kind of an honor to work for him.

“Oh my God, are you crying?” Jojen asks, peering over at Meera’s face.

“Oh my God!” she screeches, pressing her hands to her face. “Shut up!”

 

 

  
So. Meera is crying. But not in the way that he was wary of. She’s not being a fragile crybaby. He is actually just a _fucking monster,_ and so it makes sense that she is crying over that.

He says, “Oh my God, stop it. Stop crying,” as he ineffectually pats her on the back.

 

 

  
The rest of the day is still difficult — because it’s still kind of emotional and there is just so much to cover.

Yoren ends up admitting that he thinks he’s at capacity — talent-wise, ability-wise. He tells them that it was the hiring of Missandei that made him think that he’s just not that great at his job. He’s just adequate at it. And he’s older, so it’s not like he’s going to suddenly get massively better. He tells them that it’s sometimes hard for him to work with people whose talents far exceed his own. But the pay is great. The environment is great. His colleagues are great. He knows what his lane is. He will continue to do his best within his lane.

Missandei frowns. She says, “Yoren . . .”

He shrugs, and he grins. He says, “It is what it is. I don’t have an ego about it. It was a badly kept secret anyway. Now it’s out in the open, and we can strategize around it.”

 

 

  
They all talk about bringing in a biz dev person. The staff is cautiously optimistic, but they don’t have much experience or knowledge on this kind of stuff. They are afraid of having to do work on terrible things, like car dealership commercials. What if the new person has them do that? Also, the stereotype they have in their heads of sales or business-minded people is that they are typically white alpha males. Whether or not that is true of the person that they end up hiring, they just don’t want to deal with toxic masculinity in the workplace. Drogo is already enough, but at least Drogo isn’t a white male.

 _“You guys_ are _white!”_ Drogo snaps, trying not to laugh so much around the words. It’s so crazy to him that these white kids have these concerns.

“You’ve been disenfranchised though,” Meera says, totally with a straight face. “The Dothraki have been pushed out of King’s Landing, time and time again. So you must get it.”

“Oh my God, Meera!” Jojen says. “You just whitesplained to him!”

“What!” she says. “No!”

“You totally did!”

She looks horrified. She says, “Oh no!”

“Guys, shut up!” Grey snaps. “Fucking Christ, this is why we never get enough fucking done in meetings! And relax, do you think I’m going to go off and hire a straight white alpha male and let him boss you guys around? That’s not going to fucking happen. I won’t let that happen. And Meera, you totally whitesplained to Drogo. Apologize to him.”

She hangs her head. “Sorry, Drogo.”

“It’s fine, hon,” Drogo says. “You’re cute.”

Grey pushes his luck. He says, “Okay, Drogo, now you _definitely_ have to apologize to Meera for your toxic masculinity.”

“Oh, shit,” Drogo says. “Touché. Sorry, Meera.”

“It's okay, Drogo,” Meera says.

To Missandei, who is sitting on the couch with her legs crossed, Grey says, “Yo. I think I’m great at conflict resolution now. Holy shit — is there nothing I can’t do?”

She bursts out laughing — because there are many things he’s not good at — like, he’s definitely _not_ good at conflict resolution still. But he just looks so serious and also so proud of himself that it’s the most adorable thing in the entire world to her. Her laughter slows down as she looks off to the side, out of the window at the grass field outside of the house — but as she glances at his face, she descends into another giggle fit. She holds onto her stomach as she sways in her seat. She’s laughing because the conflict resolution she just witnessed was so straightforward and Pavlovian and efficient and _crazy._ She’s laughing because he opened up the entire thing by barking at everyone to shut up.

He’s trying not to laugh, too. He knows why she’s laughing. He’s trying _so hard_ to keep his face serious. His lower lip is trembling though. He licks it before he says, “Why you laughing! Am I funny!”

She covers her mouth with one hand, covering her nose, too, face flushing because she’s suffocating herself a little bit. She shakes her head urgently, as these laugh-tears bloom in her eyes.

It might be the first time any of the kids have seen Missandei and Grey be like this — all cute together and so obviously fond of each other. It’s this exact moment that Meera starts to ship them together.

 

 

  
Once six o’clock rolls around, Pyp — who has been counting down the minutes — says, “Oh my God, yes! We are done!” He has pages and pages of notes that he needs to organize and edit down to a document later so that they create new procedures out of it all. Just a lot of fun stuff on the horizon on top of his regular workload. But for now, they are done!

 

 

  
Grey and Yoren pretty much make dinner while the rest of the staff just drink from celebratory bottles of wine and excitedly chat with each other. Jojen and Drogo kind of have a friendly and aggressive argument around music as they wrestle for control of the remote — as Jojen handily loses because — duh — Drogo can physically overpower Jojen with his forefinger.

Missandei is swirling her wine around in her glass as she giggles and laughs with Yoren — and they are right next to Grey, so he pops in and out of the conversation sometimes, too. Yoren is flirting with her, and she’s been drinking so she’s been letting him flirt with her and even flirting back. Yoren has actually been dating the same woman for the last six months, but he still thinks that Missandei is really beautiful, and it is all pretty harmless.

“How come you had to break my heart?” Yoren asks her teasingly, as he stirs around pasta sauce, as she snorts and shakes her head. He’s referring to her rule about not dating coworkers. He says, “You never even gave me a chance to wine and dine you.”

“Well, what do you think you’re doing right now?” she says, breaking out into another laugh. “Here’s the wine. You’re cooking. I’m going to _eat_ your food. This seems like a date to me.”

“Am I going to get a good night kiss at the end of the night?”

“Oh my God!” she squeals. “I don’t kiss on the first date.”

“She actually puts out on the first date,” Grey mutters. He’s watching the pot of pasta. And he is completely fucking joking and not referring to their romantic past together at all. She actually did not put out on their first date. He actually ruined that one and sent her home in tears like how he likes to do. He’s just trying to slut-shame Missandei to be funny — but she makes it look really suspect by choking on her wine and spitting it up, dribbling it down the front of her white shirt and a little bit on Yoren and a little bit in the pasta sauce, which Yoren valiantly keeps stirring.

 

 

  
She has to go change her shirt. When she comes back in sleep clothes — a t-shirt and shorts — Drogo grabs onto her bare thigh and squeezes. She’s like, “Hey!”

He says, “You’ve been working out. Holy shit, baby. You feel great. What have you been doing?”

She perks up, because she’s actually been kind of obsessed with this. She tells him that she’s been strength-training about three days a week. She does cardio the other three days. And she rests and gorges herself on food on Sundays, because that’s her family day.

Drogo says, “Well, you’ve been looking amazing.”

“You have,” Meera says eagerly, nodding really eagerly. “Grey, don’t you think she looks amazing, too?”

Grey tosses Meera a look — like a WTF look. He’s in the middle of slapping a big bowl of pasta onto the middle of the table — the one that Missandei spat into. He spastically says, “What? She looks fine. You look fine. Osha looks fine. Who cares?” He’s getting choked up on his own anxiety now. He shouts, “I don’t think I should be commenting on the appearances of my female employees! You all look like people to me!”

 

 

  
They stayed up entirely way too late with each other, so they are all kind of groggy when they get up to pack their things and vacate the rental. They get back to King’s Landing by two o’clock, and Grey tells them that they can still have the rest of the day off — but they all end up going into the office for a couple of hours anyway, to check email and do a few small things here and there.

 

 

  
There’s still daylight out when he shuts it all down. He stacks some of the dishes in the dishwasher before he shuts off the lights. She is shrugging into her jacket. To him, she says, “Man, what an awesome couple of days. Man, I am so fucking smart and so fucking amazing and just fucking _right_ all the time.” She’s gloating right now — so hard. She thinks she deserves it after all of the shit he put her through. She follows him to the door and she says, “What is even like, being around such excellence all the time? What’s it like, being around such profound _rightness_ all the time?”

“Man, you are right about something once, and you just let it go right to your head,” he mutters, smiling into the door as he fiddles with the knob before wrenching it open. He lets her exit before he does.

“Man, don’t even,” she says, still preening behind his back as he locks up. “I am right like, probably ninety percent of the time. Just think of how much I could get done in a day if you weren’t constantly holding down my excellence with your general aversion to excellence.” She’s laughing now — because if there’s one thing that Grey is known for, it’s definitely hatred of excellence.

“Yeah, man,” he says, after testing out the knob. After he’s sure that it’s all locked up, he turns around to face her. They start walking to the elevator. He says, “That’s your life. Just having your excellence thwarted by my deadweight, right?” He grins at her. “I mean, just think about how much higher you can fly when you don’t have some bitch keeping you down.”

Her face opens in recognition after a second — her eyes go wide. She says, “Oh my God, I said that to Drogo!”

He laughs. He says, “You totally did.”

“That was so mean!”

“It was _really_ funny,” Grey says. “Because it hurt his feelings so badly.”

She is giggling, too. She says, “Oh my God, why do you think that’s funny? And why am I _laughing_ along with you?”

“Oh my God, it’s because I am hilarious.”

“You _are,”_ she insists, easily agreeing. The elevator doors open, and they are on the ground floor now. “People don’t realize this about you because sometimes you are so scary.”

“I try not to entertain people too much through the power of my words. Because it’s probably too much for some people to comprehend. I mean, I’m already hot as hell. And I almost have like, genius-level intellect. And I’m like, an emerging voice of my generation. I think it’d be too much for people to also handle the comedic gold that spills out of my face, you know?”

He’s actually being kind of bitterly self-deprecating, in his very, very special and cloaked way. But her body is just all warm and flushed because he’s wrong and he’s also right about himself. She can’t even stop herself from looking at him the way that she does sometimes. She can’t even tear her eyes away from him sometimes. She adoringly says, “You are. You are all of those things.”

And it sounds so fucking real and it holds so much belief in him that he actually just goes, “Ugh.” Like, he makes a noise of disgust. And then he says, “Don’t say it.”

She says, “I’m sorry. I love you. Am I allowed to say that? Am I allowed to feel my feelings? Goddamn, you are nuts.”

He says, “Okay.” He’s all amped and all tense and all manic and also very, very nervous. He says, “Let’s do this. For real. Let’s do this thing for real.”

 

 

 

 

 


	48. Grey tries not to backtrack

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Missandei prioritizes herself and her friends over getting laid. Good job, Missy. Obara is pretty cool that Yara is sleeping with her sister, but still condemns everyone involved. Meera still just believes in love. And Grey may or may not just ruin everything for himself like how he likes to do.

 

 

 

  
She barks out, _“What?”_ standing there on the sidewalk outside of their office like an idiot. She says it because she is suddenly filled with an obscene hope. And she probably heard wrong. And all she can do is repeat, _“What?”_

He looks really scared and really tortured as he says, “Missandei, I’m serious. Let’s try again. Let’s be together again for real.”

She starts laughing kind of nervously and kind of hysterically because this is lunacy.

 

 

  
Her mouth flaps up and down a few times as her mind fights to catch up. She asks, “Why?” As in, why now? Why not before? Why at all? What is he even _saying?_

“Oh my _God,”_ he grinds out, suddenly sounding all angry and ticked. “I have to be honest. It’s because I really miss you.”

She gives him a look of utter incredulity, because he made it seem like it’s a terrible reason — the why of it all. But then he said something sweet. But he sounded pissed off when he said it. She says, “I miss you, too?”

He says, “Do you wanna go somewhere?” And then he shuts his eyes momentarily — looking like he’s mentally kicking his own ass. And then he says, “To _talk,_ I mean. Not to have sex. But I mean — we _could._ I wouldn’t be opposed to that. But we should talk, too.”

 

 

  
She tells him that she actually has these dinner plans — with her friends. She actually has to run off to meet Yara, Obara, and Ygritte, otherwise she’d stay and they’d talk this out.

She’s not altogether sure this isn’t a stupid and spontaneous blurt on his part that he will regret soon enough, so she nervously says, “We can talk about this later though, if you still feel the same way?”

He says, “Like, when?”

She nervously scrunches up her hair in her hands as she thinks it over. She’s tempted to get answers right away, so she’s tempted to just cancel on dinner and just spend the night talking with him. But she used to do that shit all the time in the past — put him and his needs over her own, and she used to prioritize him over her friends. So this is why she quickly vetoes this option. She will not cancel on her friends for this.

She’s tempted to ask him if she can just come over to his place after she’s done with dinner — but chances are very strong that she’ll be tired because it’ll be late, and all she’ll want to do is just have sex with him before she falls asleep. She does not think it’s smart to have sex with him again before they talk things out, so she also vetoes this option.

Tomorrow after work, she has this pilates class that she’s doing with Dany. Thursday night is opening night of Sarah’s play. Friday Pod is actually back in town, so all of them, including him, are getting together for dinner. Saturday she and Jojen are spending much of the day cutting their video together. Saturday night she has Obara’s thing. Sunday is family day.

Holy shit. She has done such a good job of keeping busy so she doesn’t wallow too much. Her life is jam-packed with stuff and people. She says, “Holy shit, I don’t think I’m free until next Monday night.”

He looks kind of crestfallen. He says, “Missandei. That’s so far away. That’s basically an entire week.”

“Yeah,” she says softly. “I’m sorry. I just am really busy this week.”

“Wow,” he says, nodding — also blinking rapidly and just trying to think through things now. He says, “Um, okay. Um, so a week. Next Monday. Um, let me take you to dinner.”

She thinks that Monday will give him ample time to get cold feet. It will give him ample time to freak himself the fuck out and come up with a bunch of new reasons not to do this. It will give him plenty of time to back out. She doesn’t voice any of this doubt out loud though.

He’s actually similarly scared. Monday is going to give him so much fucking time to think and to evaluate and to really examine what he said and what he offered in a spontaneous moment of hopefulness. Monday will mean that he has to come at this really methodically and really even — not because he misses sex or misses her body and sex or misses the way she makes him feel with sex — and also all of the other fucking wonderful and amazing things about her. Monday affords him so much fucking time to actually be intentional about this. He’s also afraid that he’s going to back out because he gets freaked out.

“I’m sorry, but I gotta run,” Missandei says, starting to walk backwards toward where her car is parked. She’s going to be late to dinner as it is. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Yeah, of course,” he says. “See you tomorrow.”

 

 

  
Yara wants Missy and Ygritte to be at dinner when she tells Obara that she’s been sleeping with Obara’s sister — because that does not seem fucking awkward for Missandei or Ygritte at all. Missy has told Yara that Yara probably has thirty pounds on Obara — of muscle, chill out — so Yara will be more than okay.

So when Yara tells Obara that she’s been sleeping with Tyene, Obara makes a face — like a face of mild discomfort. And then Obara is like, “Why are you telling me this?”

Yara throws Missandei under the bus. She says, “Because Missy told me that I needed to tell you in order to be a person that has integrity!”

“Okay, those were not my exact words,” Missy says.

 

 

  
Turns out, Obara is more ticked that her sister is messing around with Obara’s friend when she can have her lesbian romp with any of the other lesbians in King’s Landing. Turns out that stuff is falling the other way. Obara rolls her eyes and mutters that Tyene is just a real fucking hot mess sometimes. She tells Yara, “She’s using you to feed her own ego. As long as you’re cool with that, I’m cool.” Obara is actually making it sound super uncool — to be into that.

Ygritte reaches over and knocks her knuckles on the table, in front of Yara’s plate. She says, “Hey, remember what we said about straight girls? Remember what we said you’d do?”

“Don’t fuck with ‘em,” Yara says, groaning.

“Yep. Don’t fuck with ‘em. Speaking of which, I met this woman at work — her name is Ana, and she’s _super gay —”_

“Oh my God, please stop trying to set me up with random gay women you meet. It’s insulting.”

“She a _digital media producer!”_ Ygritte hisses. “Thanks for letting me finish, asshole. She owns her house. She freelances on the side. Her work is great. She’s super creative, and I’ve been in meetings with her and it’s like, whoa, what a badass. She is, by all accounts, _an actual adult._ You guys have lots of stuff in common. But by all means — keep having bad sex with straight women who eventually leave you because you will never give them a baby, and they are too chickenshit to deal with the discomfort of bringing you home to family dinner.”

 _“Scathinggg!”_ Missandei croons out. “I love _ittt!_ Man, straight women are the worst.”

 

 

  
When he sees her at work the next day — early in the morning when it’s just the two of them — he is drinking from his cup of coffee as he asks her how dinner with her friends went.

She remembers that Yara is one of his best friends, so he might have a particular interest and perspective on this. She tells him that Yara’s been sleeping with Obara’s sister. And then she dramatically pauses with wide eyes as she watches for his reaction. And, fucking incredibly predictably, he has none. No outward reaction at least.

She mimes a bomb going off. She blows air through her tongue and teeth, mimicking the sound of a bomb going off. She says, “I know, your mind was just blown.”

He laughs right then.

“So, do ya have thoughts?”

“Me?” he says, touching his hand to his own chest. He says, “Uh, I think it’s her life. She can do what she wants in it.”

“You don’t think her behavior is totally self-sabotaging and destructive?”

“I mean, it totally is,” he says reluctantly. “And it has been like this for years, but it’s none of my business.”

“She’s your friend though. Don’t you want her to be happy?” She’s tilting her head, looking at him curiously. He feels like he is definitely flunking the shit out of this pop quiz that he wasn’t expecting. Which, he supposes, is the nature of pop quizzes.

He says, “I feel like me casting judgement really does not make her happy.”

“So you don’t say anything at all?”

“Huh,” he says, because that’s not at all how he would choose to articulate what he does. But he supposes that it’s accurate enough. He says, “No. Typically I do not.”

“Huh,” she says. “That’s interesting.”

 

 

  
The connection to the TV screen and Grey’s phone freezes in the middle of the staff meeting, and he starts showing his age by absently tapping on his phone like it’s an Etch A Sketch or a Classic Nintendo game cartridge — to try and get it to work again — when Missandei gets up from her seat and gently grabs his phone from him. She flips the phone over so that he can fingerprint it and unlock it for her, which he does so wordlessly, and then she furrows her brows slightly as she restarts the cast.

When it works again, she silently hands him back his phone and walks back to her seat. He does not even _thank her._ He just continues talking about the kind of UI design he is looking for.

And Meera is just _dying_ over this shit. She wants to scream to Grey to just run to her — just run to Missandei with his arms wide open. Meera wants to scream to Missandei to just open up her heart and accept his love.

 _“Meera!”_ Grey snaps. “I can tell you’re not even fucking paying attention to me! And the problem with that is that you’re the _lead_ on this!”

“Oh!” she says, scrambling to grab her notepad so she can scribble stuff onto it and pretend she was paying attention. “I’m taking notes! See!”

 

 

  
Meera’s new and really oblivious pet project that she works on in the five-minute increments when she’s not taking a work break by adding to her extensive collection of Drake memes is that she plots ways to lock two of her bosses in a closet or in a broken elevator or maybe she can get them caught outside together in a romantic rainstorm — so that they will realize that they are kind of perfect for each other.

Over an organic beef brisket burger with truffled brie cheese, Meera breaks it down to Pyp, Jojen, and Lommy, who do not currently buy into this. Meera says, “Like, they are both really successful and good-looking —”

“Wait,” Jojen says, interrupting. “Grey is good-looking? I mean, I know Missy is hot as fuck, and Drogo works out a lot. But Grey is handsome?”

Meera is so unimpressed with Jojen right now. “He’s fine _as hell,”_ Meera says.

Jojen shakes his head. He didn’t even know that Grey is fine as hell. He actually has never thought of his boss as a person who has feelings outside of getting super pissed over certain client requests. He generally has never conceived of Grey as a sexual being. Drogo yes — duh. Missandei yes — duh. But Grey? He says, “I just don’t know what women want.”

“Well, that’s obvious,” Pyp says, before sucking some more milkshake through his straw. Then he says, “They used to date a long time ago. But it didn’t work out — there must’ve been a reason why it didn’t work out. And there must be a reason why they’re just colleagues now. Maybe they’re just incompatible in that way.”

“Pyp, sometimes people don’t realize they are perfect for each other,” Meera explains patiently, like she thinks Pyp is real dumb. “Sometimes they need a nudge in the right direction.”

“Are they perfect for each other though?” Pyp says quizzically. “I mean, they are both Black, so I guess that’s something —”

“Oh my God!” Meera says. “That’s _not_ why I think they should hook up!”

“Relax. I’m joking. Grey taught me that joke.”

“Guys,” Lommy says, finally chiming in. “Are you guys going to Keegan’s party this weekend? He said there’d be a keg. But at some point, aren’t we just too old to still be going to parties with kegs?”

 

 

  
As they are waiting in line for lunch, Grey tells Drogo — really succinctly — that he’s going to to try and be with Missandei again — like in a real way. Like, in a relationship again. He partially tells Drogo to be accountable. He also tells Drogo to see if Drogo is going to tell him to stop, to tell him that this is a massive mistake and that he is a huge fucking idiot.

Drogo does not look surprised at all. Because Grey and Missandei cannot even fucking surprise him anymore. He cracks a smile and he lightly shoves Grey back a little. He says, “You sure, man? You know what a relationship is all about, right? Way more talking, way more doing shit you don’t want to do, and wayyy less sex. You sure you want that?”

“No, I’m not fucking sure _at all!”_ Grey snaps, just all angry all of a sudden.

“Whoa, simmer down now, buddy,” Drogo says, putting his palm against Grey’s chest. “You will be okay.”

“Also, I’m having zero sex right now,” Grey says. “So a relationship would actually result in an increase of sex for me — even if we have sex even _just once.”_

 _“Whoa!”_ Drogo says appreciatively. “Look at you! Talking about having sex out loud, you horny little bastard!” He basically shouts this in front of all of the other people waiting in line for their lunch. Drogo giggles and then dramatically shoves his fingers into Grey’s stomach.

“Oh my God!” Grey says, just twisting up in a spasm like he usually does. _“Stop!”_

 

 

  
Grey is just cramming food into his face and trying to eat his feelings — he bought two wraps for this reason — and they are sitting around a fountain in the city park because it’s a nice day out. With his mouth completely stuffed, Grey miserably tells Drogo that he’s all freaked out and scared, because he’s just about almost positive that he’s just going to _suck so bad_ at being with her. He already had a conversation with her in the morning and he really sucked at it — at having a fucking _conversation._ He was just saying shit like a fucking _idiot,_ and she was standing there looking at him like, _oh my God,_ like realizing that she is about to hook up with a fucking _moron._ And it’s only a fucking matter of time before she realizes that all the shit that comes out of his mouth is actually fucking _stupid_ and that she’s too smart and too deep for his shallow _shit._ And she’s just going to fucking bounce the fuck on out because he _deserves_ it. See! This is why he didn’t want to fucking do this! Sex is one thing — he’s gotten real good at that. But fucking like, _talking_ and trying to say the _right things_ and just being a fucking normal _human_ that doesn’t repulse another human — that is like, _hard._

Grey runs out of wrap. His cheeks are straining in pain from holding it all in. He groans and starts swallowing, bit by bit.

Drogo is laughing. Drogo is cracking up and has his arms around Grey, shaking his shoulders as he cackles. Drogo says, “Bud, you’re gonna be okay. Don’t stress out too much about things. You’re always just obsessing and thinking all the time. Just — knock that shit off!”

“What the fuck advice is that!”

“Man, just relax, baby. Just like, chill out. She already knows you’re a little weirdo. She likes it. It’ll be okay. You need to like — just relax.”

“Drogo!” Grey shouts from behind a wall of carbs and steak. “Telling me to relax repeatedly doesn’t fucking work! Try something else!”

Drogo laughs. He starts rubbing Grey’s back. He’s trying something else. He says, “Oh my God, you’re so tense. How you haven’t given yourself an ulcer already, I don’t even know.”

 

 

  
“Hey,” Grey says, sliding himself onto Yara’s couch. He picks up her remote control from off the coffee table and squishes his butt around in his seat, trying to get properly situated. Theon is out. She called Grey. He is here. He says, “I heard you’re fucking Obara’s sister. How is that going for you?”

She slams a bowl of popcorn into his lap before she jumps over the back of the couch and drops heavily into the seat next to him. She claws her fist into the bowl and makes a complete mess in his lap that he has to pick up and eat. She says, “You fucking gossiping hags, all y’all.” She steals the remote from him because she wants to pick the movie.

“Yeah, man,” he says, slouching down a little more. “So, how do you feel about stuff?”

“Like, with her?”

“Sure,” he says. “Or in general. How are things going in general?”

“Baby bear, no offense — but I really do not want to talk about this right now,” she says. “I just wanna watch a car chase or watch something blow up — and I want to watch a really unrealistic R-rated sex scene with you all uncomfortable and stiff next to me. I mean your body, not your penis. But dude, if the spirit moves you —”

“Yara! Shut up!”

She’s laughing into her hand. She’s still laughing as she pats his leg. She says, “I really appreciate the thought and the monstrous effort, Grey. But I just don’t feel like talking about that right now.” She pauses. “I just want to talk about your penis and how it better not get all aroused around me.” And then she starts chuckling again. She says, “I even don’t know why this is funny to me! Probably because I am thirteen years old!”

She’s still cracking up next to him. The sound of her laugh — the joyful and slightly malicious sound of it — gradually seeps into his brain. And gradually, incrementally, his body relaxes, and he starts laughing along with her.

 

 

 


	49. Grey is trying to get fat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grey's self-sabotaging is pretty much on schedule. He's trying to get fat so that Missy will no longer love him. Pod comes for a visit and sends Jojen into an insecure tailspin!

 

 

  
They are doing pilates together because Dany doesn’t eat or drink because she is trying to slow down the aging process via starvation or something like that. So Missandei was given two options: They can spend time together at a salon, maybe get their nails done or their lashes extended — or they can exercise together. Missandei chose exercise because she is fine with her sloppy nail polish and her natural lashes. She likes to look realistically pretty. She does not need to be inhumanly beautiful like Dany because Missy is already uncomfortable under the male gaze. She really does not want to be inviting more of that through like, fluttery fuck-me lashes.

After class, during their relaxing walk-and-talk in the city park, right before night falls and the park becomes a hot meeting point for drug deals, Dany asks Missandei just how racist Missandei thinks Dany is, on a scale of one to ten.

Missandei raises her brows and she dryly says, “I’m not going to say a number.” She’s not going to say a number because she’s afraid that Dany will take the number and tell all the people of color that work for her that her BFF, who is Black, said that Dany is only racist _that much._ Missy cannot put this past Dany.

“We’ve never talked about this before,” Dany says vaguely.

“Ah, no. We haven’t.”

“Has it not been an issue for you? Me being super white?”

Missandei laughs. Because it’s kind of cute that Dany knows that she’s super white and is saying it freely. Missy says, “Generally not.”

“Generally?”

“Sometimes you make me feel a certain way — but I’m not altogether sure it’s something that you should own. It’s my own hang-up.”

“Like what?”

“Well, like when we were younger and weren’t friends yet — you kind of forced me to be your friend. It felt . . . coercive. At times.”

Dany is completely surprised to learn this. She says, “It did?”

“Yeah, because you were my boss, so you had this power over me. So it was hard to say no to you when you wanted to get together outside of work. So sometimes I agreed to hang out with you just to not rock the boat or make it harder for me at work. The power dynamic there made me feel like . . . trapped sometimes. So it was kind of racial in that way.”

“Wow, I did not know this.” Dany’s impression of that whole time period was that she was bold and went after what she wanted — and what she wanted was a friendship with Missandei. She pursued Missandei just like how a man would assertively pursue a woman he was sexually interested in. Okay — so Dany sees where she went wrong now.

Missy shrugs. “Yeah, it’s not really a big deal anymore because it worked out for us.”

Dany shakes her head. “Missandei — that sounds terrible. You sound like a stupid abused woman who fell in love with her rapist.”

Missandei winces. “I really do not think that’s an accurate way to describe us.”

 

 

  
Drogo is already asleep by the time Dany crawls into bed with him. She wants for him to know what she has learned about herself though, so she nudges him awake by saying his name a lot and by shaking his bare shoulder. She says, “Drogo, Drogo, Drogo, Drogo, Drogo —”

And he grunts and he pries her hand off his shoulder. He says, “What, babe? Jesus Christ.” He’s still half-asleep, but he still has the awareness to make the observation to himself that she is such a dick. She would be flipping out if he woke her up from her precious sleep for a reason short of the building burning down in a raging fire.

“Drogo, I think I’m a bully.”

“Oh my _God,”_ he mutters, reaching out to grab ahold of her body. “So we’re waking each other up just to make obvious-ass statements now? No shit you’re a bully.” He pulls her close and nuzzles his nose into her cheek. He mumbles, “Night, baby,” right before he falls back asleep.

 

 

  
Grey’s been doing a lot of eating to manage his anxiety. It’s something for him to do, and he finds eating to be pretty fucking pleasant. It’s a way to offset how unpleasant he feels inside. Drogo is kind of worried that Grey will get fat in between now and Monday, and then will be so fat and ugly that Missandei won’t want him back, thus sending Grey into another downward spiral.

Drogo makes the fatal mistake of making this joke out loud. Grey accumulates a new layer of anxiety: Being too fat and ugly that she won’t take him back. And yet, he cannot even stop himself from overeating. So now he hates himself for his lack of willpower — on top of worrying about everything else, such as his business, the quality of his work, the quality of the work of his employees, bandwidth and capacity limitations, everything going down crapper due to too much work that they can’t handle it all at high standards, everything going down the crapper because suddenly work dries up and he has to lay a bunch of people off, Missandei not feeling the same way anymore, Missandei telling him she was mistaken and she never felt that way about him, Missandei quitting because she gets a better offer elsewhere, Missandei dying in a freak bus and car collision in the street, everyone dying because a meteor hits the planet, worldwide extinction and devastation.

Grey like, semi-burns a bag of popcorn in the work microwave — the smell is pungent and distracting for five minutes — Yoren has to walk over and open a bunch of windows — and then the staff watches as Grey _eats the bag of popcorn_ anyway.

“Dude, are you pregnant?” Osha says jokingly, slouched in her office chair as she watches him cram another fistfull of brown popcorn into his mouth.

“I might be,” he says blankly. “I _am_ late this month.” And then he shakes his head because it’s a stupid joke, and he has no fucking idea where he was planning on going with that.

 

 

  
Before she leaves to go to her niece’s school’s subversive take of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, in which all of the male characters are played by female students and all the female characters are played by male students — Missandei stops by Grey’s office, shutting the door behind her even though the only other person left is Drogo.

“What?” he says, all suspicious that the door was shut.

He’s sitting at his desk, so she has to bend down and reach over it to grab his face in both of her hands before tugging his head a little bit forward toward her so she can lay one on him. The first kiss is quick, juicy, but still pretty classy and chaste. It’s already over by the time he puckers up.

She sees him purse his lips, which emboldens her to dip back in. The second kiss is deeper and more open-mouthed — they touch tongues for a stroke before she breaks away again with a groan because she can actually just keep kissing him for a few hours.

He says, “What — the hell?”

Now she’s smiling at him. Then she points an accusing finger at him and says, “You need to relax!” Then she reaches out to run her palm over his cheek real quick. She says, “You’ve been giving me secondhand anxiety.”

He does not even know what to say as she straightens up to her full height. He’s just staring at her. He’s reaching up to touch his lips with his fingertips because his lips are all tingly.

She kind of chuckles. She says, “Why have you been so nervous?”

“You know why,” he says.

“Actually, I _don’t_ know why you’re so anxious!” she says. She gestures up and down at herself, up and down her body, from her thighs to her neck. “I am a _sure thing._ Like, I probably shouldn’t say that because I’m making it sound like I’m just giving it away, and you don’t have to work for it — and _yes,_ you will have to work for _it_ — but I am a sure thing!”

“Oh my God,” he says, shifting his eyes around the small office. “What is _‘it’?_ Is it sex? Or something else?” Because her gesturing is spanning her crotch and also her breasts, so this is very ambiguous to him. Is it those parts or the entirety of her? He’s frowning. He can’t even make himself relax. She doesn’t know what the hell she’s saying. There’s no such thing as a sure thing. There’s so much that can happen between now and Monday. She could get a really sweet job offer that takes her halfway around the world again. She really _could_ get hit by a bus.

His nervousness _really is_ bleeding into her. She’s fidgeting a little bit, tweaking her forefinger around in the tight fist of other hand as she shyly says, “I mean being with me?” The end of the sentence lilts into a question, and she even rocks a little bit onto her tiptoes as she says it. “I mean, if you want, that is. Do you still feel the same way? Do you still want to be with me?”

It sounds so fucking sweet and so fucking vulnerable and so brave that he just wants to punch himself to death in the fucking face. But in actuality, all he can really do is say, “Yeah,” all flat and devoid of meaning, with his throat all dry because he is fucking lame. “I do.”

She looks really pleased and proud. She straightens up even more, kind of puffing out her chest. She’s smiling so hard as she says, “Good.” She points at him again. She says, “Monday.”

“Monday,” he echoes.

 

 

  
Missy, Mars, Jess, Camille, and Jennifer have to sit through hours of Shakespearean dialogue recited by nervous high schoolers just to get to the fourth act, in which Sarah — spurred into the performing arts by her crush — haltingly recites her twelve lines. Sarah plays the part of the tailor, a dude who custom-makes a dress just so Petruchio can be a dick to Katherine in order to break her spirit.

Sarah is not particularly talented at acting, but Missy isn’t completely sure that Mars knows this. He is so freaking proud. He is recording everything and he’s making Jess be his backup camera person, too. He really feels like he’s getting a second chance at everything — at being a better dad — at being a better brother — at being a better partner — at being a better co-parent. Even just two years ago, this wasn’t something he could’ve realistically imagined for himself.

 

 

  
Mars makes Sarah perform her lines again back at home, in his living room. He has her do it once while he is dishing up bowls of vanilla ice cream and sprinkles — and he misses a little bit of it, so he makes her do it _again_ after he situates himself on the couch with his bowl in hand.

Missy reaches out to wind her arm around Camille’s waist, pulling her a little bit closer for a little cuddle. Because sometimes it’s hard to be the consistent and more responsible kid.

 

 

  
Pod tries to surprise them while they are still at work in their studio, because he just wants to see them work together again — but he actually arrives at a bit of a tough and tense time. His arrival doesn’t trigger the warm welcome he was sort of expecting. Rather, he finds that the entire staff is sequestered in the conference room, and Grey is pacing back and forth in front of the white board with a marker in his fist.

Missandei is first to spot Pod and recognize him. She waves hello to him with two fingers and silently gestures for him to enter the room, which he does.

He has interrupted a brainstorming session.

“Difference makers?” Lommy says.

“No, that’s too abstract,” Grey says.

“It is kind of a weird standalone phrase,” Lommy admits.

Grey lightly shrugs. He’s shrugging instead of yelling at Lommy for saying shit that he realizes is fucking weird after the fact. Because Grey understands that insulting Lommy for his ideas demoralizes him, and Grey has been working on being better about this kind of stuff.

“Heavy lifters?” Meera suggests. “That has a double meaning sort of.”

“I kind of like that,” Drogo says.

Grey doesn’t. But he’s not saying it’s a turd of an idea. Instead, he says, “The art would have to be changed if we go with that copy. I would rather not have to change the art.”

“Cool,” Meera says easily. “How about master makers?”

“No,” Grey says.

“Masterful makers?” suggests Pyp.

“No,” Grey says, twirling his hand in a circle. “But keep going.”

“Master crafters?” says Jojen.

“No.”

“Adept makers?”

“Too far,” he says. “Back up.”

 

 

  
“Baby boy!” Drogo finally shouts out when the staff meeting is over. He runs over, dips down, and picks up Pod by the legs, hiking his uneasy body up and nearly over Drogo’s shoulder, nearly fireman-style. “You are still lighter than air, little buddy!”

“Drogo!” Pod says, mostly self-conscious that this is all happening in full-view of their staff. Pod has worked through a lot of self-esteem issues over the years, and these days, Pod knows that he’s more than competent in his work — he’s actually very good! — and he almost likens himself as one of Grey and Drogo’s contemporaries — albeit very junior to them, but still! Drogo is kind of undermining all of this by treating Pod like he’s a little baby.

And actually, that’s not what’s coming across to the staff. Jojen, in particular, is constantly being compared to Pod in casual work talk — usually in these low-key soul-crushing ways. Like, Grey will say, “Well, Pod would’ve understood this,” when he gets frustrated with Jojen. Drogo will say, “Pod was already doing this shit his first year on the job,” when he gets frustrated with Jojen. Also, Grey rarely proactively hugs the staff or gives positive reinforcement. Jojen has a bit of a distant father, so he kind of like, _craves_ that kind of stuff — subconsciously. And consciously.

So he’s kind of depressed as he watches Drogo joke around with Pod, a guy who will always be better than Jojen at everything.

 

 

  
“Hey, you!” Pod says to Grey, after Drogo finally puts him down. Pod’s opening his arms wide for a hug — which Grey laughingly accepts. They hold each other for more than three seconds, which pretty much makes Jojen and Pyp silently lose their respective minds. Lommy doesn’t care because he has a really close relationship with his dad, or rather, the man that adopted him. Lommy also doesn’t sweat the small stuff, which is probably why Grey and Drogo are always yelling at him. It’s cool.

“Ah, that brainstorming session gave me PTSD,” Pod says fondly to Grey. He laughs. “It also made my heart hurt ‘cause I actually really miss having all of my ideas shot down by you.”

“I mean, if you miss it so much, call me up,” Grey says. “I’ll shoot down all your shitty ideas for free — whenever.” And then he frowns. “We need a copywriter. Missandei is too busy to write every stupid thing. It’s crazy to me that we have a bunch of visual creatives trying to fucking write. But we’re holding off on hiring creatives until we can get a biz dev person in here. Do you know anyone who does not suck?”

 

 

  
The staff has a number of questions for Pod — just like they had a number of questions for Missandei when she first came on — about Drogo and Grey from way back in the day. Mostly, the kids want to feel reassured and comforted by stories about how Drogo and Grey did not know what they were doing at one point — that Drogo and Grey were figuring it out on the job, too, once upon a time. But Pod comes with no reassurance. Grey was already promoted over Drogo when Pod came on really green. Grey was already very, very excellent at his job and senior level at like, age 25.

Jojen says, “I’m 25 right now.” He is so freaking _behind_ in his career.

“Oh, cool,” Pod says, just completely unaware of Jojen’s inner turmoil. Time also has healed all wounds, and Pod has generally forgotten just how much Drogo, in particular, used to terrorize him. He’s forgotten how apathetic Grey used to be to him at times. It was actually worse than anything the kids are experiencing because getting older has mellowed both Grey and Drogo out a lot. This is actually something Missandei commonly reminds the staff — that Grey and Drogo are a lot more chill than they used to be — but no one really believes her.

 

 

  
They all leave work at a reasonable hour because it feels like a special occasion. Missandei gives Pod a hug and a kiss and tells him that she has to go home and change really quickly because she wore the wrong shoes and her feet are killing her. Also, her clothes are all tight and she feels all claustrophic and constricted. She wants to wear stretchy stuff for all of the food she’s going to eat for dinner.

It’s an excess of information, but he smiles at her anyway. He remembers the unrealistic crush he used to have on her. He thinks that she’s still really really nice, really really pretty, smells really really amazing, and is still really really into Grey.

She gives Drogo a hug and gives Grey’s jacket a short tug before she ducks into her car.

 

 

  
Jaime gets off work early, too, and meets them for happy hour drinks. They watch Grey scarf down a rice bowl, assuring them all that he will find a way to still eat dinner. Pod is amazed as Grey pre-eats in preparation for dinner. Some of Jaime’s puberty-related predictions for Grey have not come true — that metabolism isn’t slowing down just yet — maybe it never will.

As Grey eats, Pod starts talking about how it’s annoying to age. He’s more scared of injury these days, because even tweaking his shoulder will make work really fucking hard and terrible. Even getting a cold will put him out of commission and lose a day or two of work because people are so germaphobic these days — and he’s also frail.

“Um, you sound ridiculous because you are still young,” Jaime mutters, guiding his drink to his face. “Also, it only gets worse.”

 

 

  
They end up talking about the women in their lives, or as Drogo likes to say — their bitches. Pod is like, “I would rather not refer to my girlfriend as my bitch,” which makes Drogo roll his eyes at him in massive derision.

It’s generally same ol’, same ol’. Pod is still unsure about when he’s going to ask Erin to marry him. Drogo and Jaime have really unhelpful suggestions, like throwing a bunch of plastic rings from gumball machines at her and telling her dumb ass to just pick one. Jaime quizzically asks Pod why he’s so nervous. Isn’t it a done deal? Like, she’s going to say yes, right? They’ve talked about this, right?

“We’re trying to save up for a house,” Pod says. “We don’t have money for wedding.”

Jaime, who is rich, says, “Oh, weird.” Then he changes the subject and starts talking about how he and Brienne held hands the other day, in a deadpan tone of voice. And then he says, “I’m joking. We had sex. It was weird, awkward, yet awesome.”

Drogo says, “What made it awesome?” which causes Jaime to laugh. Because usually, people ask about what made it weird or awkward.

Jaime says, “I’m kind of in love.”

Pod is like, “Aw!”

Drogo is like “Oh, gross.” And he doesn’t mean that love is gross. He’s a fan of love. He actually means that Jaime in love is kind of gross.

“It took like ten years of therapy to be able to say that out loud,” Jaime says. “Like, seriously.”

 

 

  
Drogo is so immersed in the lack of sentimentality that Dany brings to his life, so he breaks his shit down thusly: They are not sure just how racist Dany is, but she is definitely racist. They are not sure just how pissed Drogo should be over this stuff, and if they should break up. But like, Dany puts up with his latent sexism and misogyny all the time, and isn’t that what a relationship is? Just putting up with shit that makes them all just die inside? Sex is currently okay. She is still not down with butt stuff — will probably never be — but she’s getting down with oral.

Drogo just said that last bit to make Pod and Jaime supremely uncomfortable because Dany has her own special thing with each of them. The words land just as predicted — they stiffen. Drogo laughs.

“How do you and Erin have sex?” Drogo asks — still just trying to fuck with Pod.

Pod’s face is all flushed. He pointedly ignores Drogo. To Grey, he says, “Hey, how are things with Missy?”

Drogo snickers. Grey’s face is full of calories, so Drogo takes the liberty of answering for the guy. Drogo says, “Why do you think he’s binge-eating? Things are going _great_ with Missy.”

“I hope it all goes to my hips so that I’m hideous, and she will not want to be with me anymore,” Grey says through his full mouth, shoveling more meat and rice into his face.

Jaime reaches over and pats him on the back.

 

 

 


	50. Grey is a smooth operator

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The gang have a mini reunion and old dynamics gets flushed out. Yet, everything has changed.

 

 

Jaime is one of those annoying people who only has to be in a relationship for all of five minutes before he’s an expert. He starts doling out all of this unsolicited advice to the rest of them. He says painfully obvious things like, communication is key. Jaime apparently convinced Brienne to have sex with him through the power of his words — hours and hours and hours and _hours_ of back and forth about whether they were going to destroy their friendship just for a roll in the hay. It took hours and hours of words on their fears and apprehensions before they decided that they could perhaps weather any potential storm.

Grey basically wants to cram his fist repeatedly in Jaime’s symmetrical face until it is a bloody swollen mess because Jaime is so arrogant and fucking annoying in how ignorant and self-centered he is. Grey’s head is too full from an excess of information so Grey doesn’t want to bother reminding Jaime that Grey has already lived through this _fucking life._ He has lived through the hours and hours of conversation that eventually amounted to a belief that was still built on uncertainty and blindness. And they were right and they were wrong — they were able to weather the storm in the end — maybe, maybe — maybe the jury’s still out on this — and it only fucking took nearly _seven years._

“I dunno,” Grey mutters to Jaime, before he swallowed a few mouthfuls of water. “Maybe you’re just better at relationships than I am. Like, it never occurred to me that I could just fix myself if I talk about it enough.”

“Okay, that’s not what I meant to say,” Jaime says, sighing.

“Yeah, man, I get what you’re saying.” Grey shrugs. “And I’m happy that you’re happy.”

 

 

  
She arrives at the restaurant at the same time as Yara, and it affords her the opportunity to quietly grab onto Yara’s forearm right as they enter and say, “Guess what I’m wearing right now!”

Yara just chuckles. She says, “Your clothes?”

“The panties!”

Recognition dawns on Yara’s face. She says, “Ah! You’re on your period!”

“I love them. I’m wearing my white jeans because it’s like — I don’t even _give a fuck!”_

 

 

  
They haven’t seen Pod in a while, and they don’t see Jaime as often these days, so the beginning of dinner is spent on some excruciating fact exchange. Pod spends long minutes kind of boring himself, as he tells them about his house hunt with his girlfriend and how money doesn’t really go as far as he thought it would. They all make bland observations about money — how it afford conveniences and amenities, but how it truly doesn’t buy happiness. Jaime tells him that his dad’s company is just about in the black. He tells Grey that he’s not being racist and that is just the term for profitability — Grey is not even a little bit amused, more offended that Jaime actually assumed that Grey wouldn’t know what being in the black meant. Jaime also tells them that they’re in the midst of hiring a CEO who is like, actually more than passably competent. Maybe one who doesn’t have to frantically Google random acronyms that she hears throughout the day, in between meetings. Jaime says, “The announcement is being made at the start of next month — and I frankly _cannot_ fucking wait to go back to being idly rich again.”

“It is a good look on you,” Tyrion says mildly. “It’s been weird these past few years, looking at you and feeling a smidgen of respect for you.”

“My God,” Jaime says. “I know what you mean. I look in the mirror and I feel a smidgen of respect for myself. And it feels _wrong.”_

“Aw, you guys are so cute,” Yara says, avidly cutting up her steak into a bite that is a tad too big for her mouth. “It’s so clear your dad damaged you.” She swipes her meat through ketchup — which she totally requested from the server — and shoves it into her mouth.

 

 

  
Brienne shows up to dinner late because of work, and by the time she arrives, Drogo is already drunk and predictably inflammatory. Drogo and Brienne aren’t besties. They do not really have a great rapport. Sometimes life continues to feel like high school, and she was a major dork in high school. To her, Drogo too strongly telegraphs as a jock or as a greaser from the other side of the tracks — not an intentional euphemism for his ethnicity but Brienne is unintentionally and accidentally kind of nervous-racist around Drogo and Grey all the time. It prevents them from being real good buds. Also, her references are way outdated. Once she told Drogo he was cool like the Fonz, and he was like, “What?” and then she had to spend an entire minute explaining to him that she used to watch Happy Days reruns with her dad when she was growing up — she spent a minute telling him about her life before she clammed up and realized that he probably did not care about her silly rituals with her father because Drogo was probably busy getting laid when he was that age. The ripe old age of 12. And then she got way weird and started talking a lot about statutory rape.

She just cannot relax around this guy. They’ve known each other for years, but he is too cool and too good looking and yes, too intimidatingly ethnic.

Drogo is drunk and does not even give one fuck as he says to her, “I hear you guys are smashing.” He gestures between her and Jaime. And Brienne actually does not get his slang until he actually slams the heels of his hands together a few times to demonstrate smashing. And then her face turns to _fire._

Drogo says, “I hear it’s awkward, weird — yet awesome.”

 

 

  
Brienne is _pretty pissed_ at Jaime and trying not to like, show it? But it’s pretty obvious. This is exactly what Drogo wanted — and this is why Jaime often fucking mentally screams to the heavens to ask the heavens why the fuck Grey favors Drogo over Jaime so fucking _much._ Because Drogo is legitimately fucking _awful_ sometimes.

Drogo just licks his fingers before he casually picks off a few more fries from Yara’s plate.

“So,” Pod says, trying to move on. “How are things with you, Yara?”

“Missandei’s on her period!” Yara says, doing just a bang up job of reminding everyone that she is basically the female version of Drogo — or Drogo is the male version of her, rather. “More proof that Grey did not impregnate her in the last month.” Yara blurts this out because she does not want to talk about the shit that is going on with her brother, the shit that sometimes goes on with her dad, or the shit that is going on with her love life.

“Oh, whoa,” Pod says. “Are you guys trying to have a baby?” Pod often comes across dim-witted because he’s so fucking gullible.

“What!” Grey says aggressively through his steak and Yara’s fries. “You’d have to _actually_ be having sex for that to _actually_ be a possibility.” He hates that the spotlight is suddenly on him.

To Missandei, Grey continues to be really confusing and kind of impossible to follow. She says, “I don’t understand why you sound so angry about this when you’re the one who decided for _the both of us_ that we were going to stop sleeping together.” She doesn’t love that she is coming across like such a hag. She says, “You should be angry at yourself.”

“I _am_ angry at _myself!”_ he snaps.

“Oh,” she says, kind of deflating already. She doesn’t even know where any of this is going. She also doesn’t love that this conversation is happening in front of their friends.

 

 

  
“It’s like . . . you guys have never interacted with other human beings before,” Tyrion says slowly, referring to the Drogo, Grey, and Yara quadrant of the table, as a smile crawls over his face. “I sometimes don’t realize that I miss you guys until I’m actually with you.”

“I can’t tell if that’s a compliment or an insult,” Drogo says.

“Bro, you are eating all my fries,” Yara says to Drogo.

“Babe, Grey is eating all of your fries, too. He’s consumed five thousand calories in the last three hours. Let’s order a plate of just fries.” And before she can retort with something, Drogo says, “Chill. We’ll put it on my bill.”

 

 

  
Brienne kind of hates this. It’s pretty typical. Jaime and Tyrion have their own Lannister thing. Grey, Yara, and Drogo have their own thing. Everyone else who would prefer to have adult conversations of substance absolutely _cannot_ have any conversation that the assholes find boring — so Brienne just has to sit around listening to their gross and stupid jokes all night. She can’t talk to Pod about how work is going for him, if he still finds it challenging or rewarding because Yara will say that the topic of conversation is “super gay.” Brienne cannot talk to Missandei about how she’s liking her 800-thread count new cotton bed sheets, because there will be so many unwarranted sex jokes and comments — and all Brienne really wants to know is if the expense is actually worth it. Does it really regulate body temperature well? She sometimes sweats when she sleeps. Is it breathable? What about sweat stains? Do they wash out easily? Does Missy use Oxiclean or what?

So Brienne just sits there and says nothing, further cementing her reputation as a socially awkward freak who is not very funny or interesting.

 

 

  
They end up going over to Jaime’s place after the restaurant closes down to continue their conversations — because it’s within walking distance. Dany finishes up with her day around midnight and tiredly shows up there because she wants to see Pod and give him another casual job offer that he will not take.

Jaime tries to pay Drogo back, and he tries to embarrass Dany by bringing up butt sex and oral sex — but Dany is Dany. So she says, “I’ll let him stick something into my butt if he lets me shove something up his butt first.” She tensely throw Drogo a look — she’s not pissed that he overshared. She’s actually pissed about this butt thing and the inequity of it and the flat-out misogyny of it.

And Drogo is drunk — and also a mind-reader because he shouts, “How is it sexist!”

And she is not drunk. She is totally sober and is all like, “Fucking porn, Drogo!”

The yelling completely gives Brienne anxiety — because this is not at all how she prefers that people communicate around her. But then the fight is over as fast as it starts. Dany plops down on the couch next to Grey and leans her head on his shoulder, yawning. She flat-out says, “You’re my favorite,” to him as she pats his knee.

He says, “I know.”

 

 

  
Dany falls asleep on him, perfectly preventing him from being able to get any affection from Missandei at all without looking and sounding like a creep. Like, he cannot tell her to come and sit with him on his other side so he can be the middle of a sandwich of beautiful women, both of whom he has seen completely naked.

Dany starts snoring on him and her head starts falling off of his shoulder. So he just gives up and swipes one of the decorative pillows on Jaime’s couch, puts it on his lap, and pushes her head down. She wakes up a little bit at that and is like, “Oh, thank you,” right before she settles and falls back asleep.

“Hey,” Drogo says, holding up his phone. “This is a really cute picture for her Insta.” Drogo doesn’t care that the entire world thinks that Grey and Dany are a couple. It’s all the more funny these days because they have really become each other’s beards. Plus, Grey gets to take all of the racist heat from the small but vocal minority of Dany’s most ardently bigoted fans. Grey is better at being deaf to that stuff. Drogo doesn’t have to deal with that nonsense. It’s a good system.

 

 

  
There is something comforting and familiar about being aimlessly together during a late night hour again. They all remember being stuffed together in small hotel rooms after long day. They remember falling asleep on each other as they roll through footage.

Pod is the first to say it aloud. He tells them that there are pros and cons to the passage of time. He finds that he gains more self-confidence as he gets older. But he always forgets to enjoy moments while he still has them. He tells him that he knows he’s such a freaking sap — but he’s going to do his very best to be in this moment with them — while he is still living it.

Tyrion groans slightly, but other than that — they just let Pod have his sentimentality for a little bit.

 

 

  
Drogo tiredly gets up from his armchair an hour later and he picks up Dany from Grey’s lap and Jaime’s couch — not at all like she’s a princess. He hooks his arms underneath her armpits, and he pulls her into standing position. He shakes her awake. He says, “Babe, you barely fucking were here. And now you have to say bye. We’re going home.”

She stumbles and has to reach out to grab onto Drogo’s arm to steady herself. She sleepily says, “What the — what time is it?”

 

 

  
Grey is yawning into his fist as Yara watches Brienne not make any moves to leave Jaime’s place. Yara astutely says, “Oh, you guys wanna be together. Oh okay.” And then she randomly reaches out and slams her hand into Grey’s shoulder. She says, “Baby bear, we out!”

Grey jumps. Because she hit him, and she just makes him sound like such a hapless idiot sometimes. He was getting ready to leave — all on his own. Like, he knows when it’s time to leave. He leaves places all the time, of his own volition.

“We’re just gonna sleep,” Brienne says — not even knowing _why_ she is so defensive.

“I don’t care,” Yara says, opening up her arms to hug Jaime first.

 

 

  
Knowing that Missandei is going to be busy all weekend, Grey actually offered up his spare bedroom to Pod — which is a big deal because he typically doesn’t like it when people are in his space, and he is probably a bad host. Though he does not know for sure, having had very little practice at being one.

He’s so tired and still so full of dinner that he does not even give a fuck. He’s not going to see her all weekend, so he says goodbye to her on the sidewalk, before he and Pod walk to his car. He crankily tells Yara, Pod, and Tyrion, “Don’t look at us!”

And as Tyrion obediently turns around, he also mutters, “You’re so fucking beyond ridiculous sometimes.”

As Grey ignores Tyrion and the rest of them, he briefly touches her face with both of his hands. Like, he feels kind of okay doing this in public right now — sort of. He’s thinking that she is looking at him with such patience and tolerance. It makes him feel like he’s unworthy and like he’s always wasting her time with his shit. He tells her, “I’m sorry I snapped at you. I was annoyed with myself, and it came out wrong. It was really all Yara’s fault though.”

“Like, we can still hear you,” Yara’s voice drifts out, from behind them.

Grey ignores her, too. To Missandei, he says, “I hope you have a really nice weekend. I’m really looking forward to Monday.”

“Me too,” Missandei says, kind of inching a little bit closer to him, kind of looking at him like she wants something from him. “I’m looking forward to Monday, too. And seeing you.” She wants a little kiss from him. Or a hug. Or _something._

He gives her a few soft pats on the arm. Because he’s just _freaking out_ and really terrible with PDA and also — he thought they were waiting until Monday to put an official start date on all of this?

“Dude, she wants you to kiss her,” Tyrion says. “It’s pretty obvious.”

“Like, the signals are all there, man,” Yara says.

And just like that, the spell is broken. Missandei starts giggling, and then turns around to face their friends. Missandei says, “Thanks, guys. Thanks for the assist.”

"Come here," Tyrion says, gesturing for her to bend down a little. "I'll give you a good night kiss." 

 

 

 


	51. Yara breaks up with Obara's sister

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pod realizes that the people he idolizes are fucking hot messes!

 

 

 

  
It pretty much gets confirmed to Yara that she is a prop in a full-grown woman’s rebellion against her parents.

Tyene positions the lunch as an important meeting of important people in Tyene’s life. It’s a lunch with Tyene’s parents and also some of her other sisters, all of whom Yara has already met in another capacity through Obara. Obara decided not to go to lunch, citing she has a bunch of last-minute errands to run before her dinner party — and also she does not want to indulge in Tyene’s farcical delusion.

Yara thinks that it’s way too early for her to meet the parents, but then, it’s really not about her at all. She figures this out fast as she watches Tyene kind of freak out and get upset when her dad is a no-show. Ellaria, her mother, asserts that her father wanted to be at lunch, but he had a last-minute work situation crop up, so he regrets that he is unable to make it.

Tyene just start grilling her mother about what sort of work situation cropped up. Ellaria says she does not know the details because she did not ask. And then it becomes a full-blown awkward thing. Lunch is incredibly tense.

 

 

  
Yara is pretty sick of the constant lecturing and the repeating I-told-you-sos from a bunch of straight women, so she generally does not talk about her situation with her friends. It’s not like they ever say anything she doesn’t know. She already knows that she is mental and attracted to women who are emotionally unavailable. She is probably attracted to the kind of women she is attracted to because there was an entire period in life in which her dad, extremely disappointed in the way Theon turned out, started flipping and instead of constantly implying that she was a disgusting abomination — he started talking to her with as much respect as he could muster. There was this begrudging admission that he wishes she was his son. That ended up informing her pursuits in college and her entire career — whether she will admit it to herself or not. But everyone has shit with their dad, and she is not unique in this respect. She supposes that as her dad’s good son, she feels this bent attraction to certain women because they are in line with what her dad can potentially understand, in his very limited way.

It’s not like she doesn’t know all of these things already. She’s not an idiot. It is just impossible to enact change. This kind of change is not epic and sweeping. It is iterative. And she can’t even fucking quit smoking and make it stick. She’s been working on that for years. It’s not like she doesn’t know that smoking will kill her. She just can’t make herself fall for women who are self-assured, confident, and secure in who they are.

She goes over to Grey’s place after lunch to see what he and Pod are up to. She tries to get day-time drunk because she might as well. She finds that he has very little alcohol in his place, and she gets ticked at him for it. She asks him why she is even there. He gets annoyed with her and reminds her that he actually didn’t invite her over at all. Pod tries to broker peace between them and Pod suggests that they go out to a restaurant and just relax and hang out together — there will be alcohol there. Pod’s people-pleasing nature often irks her, so she tells Pod that she _just ate,_ so why would she go to a restaurant _again?_

“We haven’t eaten yet, though,” Pod says reasonably, gesturing between himself and Grey.

“Are we allowed to eat?” Grey asks sarcastically, crossing his arms. “Or do you want us to wait until you get hungry again so that we can do _everything you want to do?”_

That’s about when she realizes that she is being beyond unreasonable. She sighs, and she says, “Yeah, sorry. No, yeah. Of course. Let’s get you guys fed. Second lunch is on me.”

“Whoa, you’re paying?”

 

 

  
She’s not really as cheap as they all like to joke about. She likes to spoil her friends and her brother sometimes. She just likes deals. She just like bargains. This is why she urges Grey to get the lunch combo, which comes with a side salad and his choice of soup.

He tells her to get the fuck off his balls. He says, “I didn’t realize you paying for lunch would come with all these strings and you’d be able to dictate exactly what I can eat.” He’s real fucking cranky today, too. Which is not strange whatsoever.

“Baby bear, you love fish tacos though.”

“Yeah, I know!” he says, sighing all deeply. He’s having a hard time putting his finger on the pulse of just why Yara’s pushiness is bugging him so much — it’s actually because he feels like he’s being stripped of his agency and his own ability to choose, but he’s unable to zoom in on it and voice it to her at the moment because she’s pushing so hard and so fast.

Yara just doesn’t get why he is always so sensitive like Theon always is. She just doesn’t get why it’s such a fucking big deal that she knows all of this shit about him because she loves him and wants him to cut to the chase and just get the fish tacos that he’s going to order in the end because that is typically the shit that he goes for. She doesn’t get why she has to sit there and pretend that he’s not going to get the tacos and the feign surprise when he comes to the decision that he’s going to eat the tacos several minutes later.

 

 

  
She just nurses her beer as Grey and Pod continue talking about camera shit for what seems like fucking _hours._ Pod’s been shooting on a beach so they both talk about how difficult filming on a beach can be because of the tides, the moisture, the sand, and a bunch of other beachy things — for what feels like fucking _hours._

 

 

  
Pod is a basketcase — so at some point during lunch, Pod feels emboldened enough to start unleashing all of these feelings that he has. It’s really nuts and really short-sighted, because he’s talking to two people who are pretty terrible at expressing their feelings in clear and productive ways. But it’s probably this quality in Grey and Yara that Pod appreciates. They don’t realize that Pod’s other friends are a lot like him — same generally attracts other sameness — so he’s probably seeking out another kind of perspective.

Grey hates every moment of this — as Pod tells them that he’s been with Erin for nearly seven years now — that is a really, really freaking long time. She is his first real girlfriend and thus, the only woman he’s ever been with. They are buying a house together, and they are talking about marriage — and it all seems adult-like and very responsible. And then he asks, “Is there something more than this?”

It’s entirely too ambiguous so Yara and Grey do not respond to this.

Pod clarifies. He says, “We never fight. We just get along. Is that normal?” He sighs. “And to answer Drogo’s question from yesterday, we have sex about once or twice a month. That’s mostly her call. And it’s fine. I don’t need to have it more often.”

Yara and Grey are still not saying anything. They are just staring.

Pod says, “She’s really cool. I love her. It’s warm, and it’s comfortable. But sometimes it feels like . . . something is missing. Is this normal? Is it normal to feel this way?”

 

 

  
Yara is really great at giving sex advice. She is really good at giving suggestions on how people can have better sex. She generally tells people to do an honest self-assessment and begin parsing out what they actually want and like versus what they think they ought to want and like. She generally tells people that equity is important in sex and the act of giving in sex is like, a big turn-on unless one is a fucking scumbag. She generally tells people to not put sex in box. Sex isn’t just one thing. Sex doesn’t require a dick at all. Sex isn’t an orgasm. Sex can be laughing and it can be crying together and it can be like, an afternoon on the couch just being together.

Yara has like, no strong opinions on what a healthy relationship looks like. Her parents’ marriage is shit. They live in different houses and refuse to divorce each other. Yara doesn’t even know what to say to Pod right now.

And Grey, well, he just wants to go back to the part of the afternoon when they were talking about shooting on beaches and fish tacos. Like, that was a nice part of the day. And this is _exactly_ why he was hesitant to host Pod over at his place. It’s _this shit._

 

 

  
“Relationships are like —” Yara’s voice goes up way high, so she has to clear her throat to get it all normal again. “Relationships can be complicated.”

Grey points to her. He says, “Yes.”

Oh, so he has decided to just be a fucking hype man to her shit. He’s not gonna help. Awesome. She says, “Sometimes it feels a certain way in the beginning. And the sometimes it feels different in the end.”

“Yep.”

“Sometimes you have a lot of sex. But sometimes you don’t.”

“Yeah.”

 

 

  
Perhaps for the very first time since Pod has known them, the intimidating coolness and confidence that typically envelopes Yara’s whole being cracks a little bit. Pod can see through, and he can see that she doesn’t even know what the fuck she is talking about and that she is so out of her depth here. And for the first time in his entire relationship with Grey — and understand, Pod sees Grey as godlike and untouchably perfect — Pod looks at Grey and is not so distracted by the halo of light that generally shines off of Grey. Pod looks at Grey, and he kind of just sees a dude that _cannot_ even have a conversation of substance because he is so repressed and so guarded and afraid of being vulnerable.

And Pod feels sorry for the both of them.

 

 

  
Pod basically tells them both that they are emotionally retarded — but in a super nice Pod-like way. Pod actually mildly tells them that he thinks that they are not very practiced at talking about their feelings and that can be very hard in the context of relationships — so he empathizes with them and the difficulties they must have sometimes.

The fact that Pod empathizes with her is so fucking disgusting to Yara. Because Pod is a pillow of a human being. So she gets super defensive and says that she totally knows how to talk about feelings. She fucking talks about feelings all the time — all the livelong day with her fucking brother.

Pod is like, “Okaaay.”

And Yara is like, “You don’t get to feel sorry for me! I feel sorry for _you!”_

“Thank you,” Pod says. “Thank you for your empathy.”

“What the fuck, Pod!”

 

 

  
Grey starts overeating again. And now, Pod no longer sees it as a funny and benign activity. It’s definitely anxious-eating. It’s definitely kind of disordered. Wow. Grey is a mess. Wow. That is crazy because Pod thought that Grey really had his shit together — just professionally a rockstar and personally also a rockstar. On the outside looking in, Grey has a bunch of really loyal and really devoted friends. On the outside looking in, Grey has Missandei again.

 

 

  
“We’re supposed to have a big talk on Monday,” Grey mutters, shoving fried carbs into his face. “We’re supposed to officially get back together on Monday, I think.”

“That’s good, right?” Pod asks gently.

“Yeah, I guess,” Grey says. “I just don’t have a lot of options, man.” And then Grey winces — at how he articulated that. He says, “I mean, my options are that I can just continue not being with her, when she’s always right in front of my face — and that feels fucking terrible — or I can just be with her. That’s what she seems to want. So two options. Those are my choices.”

When Grey has this conversation with Drogo, Drogo typically kind of laughs it off. Drogo is probably too close to it at this point. He has been overexposed to the ebb and flow of this relationship, so he doesn’t take it very seriously anymore.

But this is novel and new to Pod. And Pod is also just a way better listener. He asks a question that no one generally ever asks Grey. He asks, “What is your ideal situation with her?”

“I think I just want easy access to her whenever I feel like being with her — like she is a toy and not even a person,” Grey says, rolling his eyes at himself.

Yara says, “Dude,” because she’s not impressed with him either.

“Hey,” Pod says softly. “I think that’s basically what I like about living with Erin. I like that we live together because it’s super convenient to talk to her or hang out with her whenever I feel like it — because she’s generally nearby. That convenience _is_ very nice.”

“Yeah,” Grey says. “When we were just sleeping together, it was great. I would send her a text or she’d send me a text. And then she’d show up at my door. That was _great.”_

“Oh my God,” Yara says. And then she chuckles a little bit.

“Why did you guys stop doing that?”

“Oh, I totally flipped my shit because I thought she was leaving again — taking another job and leaving King’s Landing. I had a panic attack or something. And I was like, oh shit. This won’t do. What if she needs to leave for real one day, and I am so nuts that I end up murdering her and keeping her body parts in my freezer so that I could keep her forever? It had to end because I am nuts. But that’s also why I’m worried now. I don’t think I’ve changed. But it’s terrible not being with her. So I guess . . . she just has to risk her life and stuff, by being with me.”

Pod laughs. He says, “Some of that actually sounds nice. You must really feel deeply for someone when you think about keeping their dead body in your freezer.” He starts really laughing now. “I think that’s probably what I feel has been missing with Erin. I think she’s so great and so freaking cool and wonderful to be around. But do I want to kill her and chop her up and keep her in the fridge? Uh, no. I don’t think I’ve ever felt that way about her.”

 

 

  
Pod is not a completely useless bag of feathers. And Yara is impulsive, so she calls up Tyene to tell her that they are totally done because Tyene is fucking _insane,_ and Yara is no longer at a point in life to deal with such insanity. Yara tells Tyene that they should stop having sex together and just stop seeing each other, period. Yara tells Tyene they both have a bunch of shit to figure out, and they cannot figure it all out together.

Tyene is surprisingly distraught over this. She starts crying on the phone — and asking Yara how the fuck Yara is gonna break up with someone over the phone, especially since they have Obara’s party later.

Yara is like, “Oh shit. I forgot. Are you still going?”

After Yara hangs up the phone, Grey and Pod are staring at her — Pod is horrified.

He says, “Did that really just happen? Did you really just break up with someone right in front of us like you were taking a quick work call?”

 

 

  
Yara is dateless to Obara’s party because Tyene told her to fuck herself after Yara asked if she was still going to the dinner party. So Yara asks Grey and Pod if they want to be her dates.

Grey has been reamed, many-a-time, for his bad RSVP etiquette, so at this point, he knows that it’s not a good idea for Yara to RSVP one guest and actually bring _two._ Like, people freak out over this. Also, he’s not sure that he should show up to a party that Missandei will be at because it reads a little bit too much like he wants to carve her face off and wear it as a mask so that he can kiss her from the inside of her mouth — so no thanks. Grey and Pod will find something else to do.

 

 

  
So Yara brings Theon. She just asks him if he wants to come and eat nice food at her friend’s house. Yara doesn’t talk to him to death about it. And surprisingly — he agrees! He says he’s not doing anything and he generally finds her friends to be pleasant.

After greeting Theon and giving Yara a big hug and some condolences for her break up — Obara already knows because Tyene already called her to scream at her for having a psychopath for a friend — Missandei asks Yara how she’s been holding up and what she’s been up to.

“Oh, I hung out with Grey and Pod all afternoon,” Yara says. “We had some nice chats. Grey talked about you. And man, are you in for it Monday. Brace yourself, babe. He's so romantic.”

 

 

 

 

 


	52. Pod and Grey get their nails done

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Drogo and Dany continue having the same fight they've been having. Grey and Pod get their beauty on. Missy continues defending her life choices to all of her friends who think she's real dumb. Yara and Obara have a weird moment.

 

 

  
As she and Drogo get ready to go out, Dany tells him that it’s annoying and difficult for her to hear that he thinks she’s a fucking racist because she and her partners actually work kind of hard to be inclusive and ethically minded with their company. Like, they’ve hired consultants and have done many assessments both on the product side and also internally. For instance, there are actually programs and guidelines in place, in terms of hiring practices and in terms of promotions and employee recognition. Much of it centers around gender equity. Some of it centers around racial equity and cultural competency.

Drogo says, “Okay, so I didn’t know that — I didn’t know that you do that.” He sighs because he is exhausted — he’s tired of this fucking fight that will never end. They’ve been having it for months and months. He says, “You clearly have good intentions — I never question that.”

“Okay,” she says evenly. “What do you mean I have good intentions?”

He means that she has a white savior complex. He means that companies always spend a shit ton of money hiring consultants whose efforts amount to nothing oftentimes. He means that she is always dressing up other people to bring them up. She is always putting Grey in a tux. Now she is putting Drogo in a tux. That is what she does. She takes men of color, and she puts them in tuxes.

“Don’t wear a tux then!” she shouts, gesturing to his formal wear. She actually never dictates what he has to wear. They are just fucking going to a venue where everyone is going to be dressed up, so it just makes sense to blend in. She _is not_ fucking dressing up these men of color like that are _fucking dolls._ He is always _accusing_ her of _this shit._ “By all means, fucking wear your dirty t-shirts and flip-flops for all I fucking care, Drogo!”

“Nah, man,” he says, adjusting his tie in the mirror. “That’d be fucking crazy, if I showed up to a fundraiser that costs five hundred a head in a t-shirt and jeans.”

God. She wants to kill him.

 

 

  
Obara is a pretty middling cook. She often wears her lack of domestic skills proudly on her sleeve. Her inability to keep a clean house and a well-stocked fridge — her inability to date a guy for very long — all contributes to this sense of female self-sufficiency. She gets to be the kind of person who is too busy with big stuff to really sweat the small stuff. For the past year, Obara has been so fucking sick of her own voice complaining about a really well-paying job that she was completely apathetic to — that she finally did something about it.

It started with an email to an editor of an alternative women’s lifestyle blog that she followed religiously. That resulted in her first freelance piece, which went okay. And that turned into a regular weekly gig that she crammed in during her lunch breaks and also late at night right before bed. At the six month mark, she was writing every day and just dying under the workload of her job and freelancing — she was dying under two full-time jobs.

She is throwing a dinner party because she is finally going down to part-time at her company, on a contract basis. It’s a solid foot out the door without completely pulling the safety net out from under her.

Ygritte raises her glass. She gives a really sweet speech about how she’s been putting up with years of Obara’s bitching — and how she’s so glad that the darkness is over. She says, “I’m so proud of you, Obie.”

“Thanks!” Obara says, standing up to refill wine glasses. “I’m proud of me, too!”

 

 

  
Grey doesn’t even know what the fuck to do, to entertain Pod. Pod has told Grey that he is actually not a child and really does not need to be entertained. Pod tells Grey to just do whatever normal stuff Grey does on a Saturday. Pod says he is really chill and cool and just is glad to have the time to decompress and relax a little bit.

But Grey cannot relax with another human being in his space. He often does errands on Saturdays. He doesn’t want to do that with Pod around. He often reads on Saturdays. He doesn’t want to fucking sit in silence in his own home and read while Pod is just hanging out in his fucking space.

“Hey,” Pod says. “I know an activity we can do together that will get your mind off Missy.”

 

 

  
Drogo gets a little nutty because he feels like sometimes Dany is just so fucking smart and has a reasonable response to every fucking thing that he just feels railroaded with her words all the time. He stigmatizes it because _of course_ he stigmatizes it, and he thinks that this is what white people do to win arguments and to keep their iron-fisted hold on their racial supremacy. He is not as fucking articulate as Dany — all he is good at sometimes is just emoting inelegantly. But the difference is that this stuff is his fucking _life,_ and she just read about it in a book. He just wants her to know that it makes him feel a certain way that he always has to dress up to integrate into her life, but she never dresses down for him. He means that she was a complete uncompromising shit almost the entire time she was visiting his family. She wouldn’t eat their food. She wouldn’t engage with his mom. She was constantly pushing her white woman agenda and talking about gender equality — and he _gets that_ — he gets that it’s important to her — but it also fucking triggers people like his sisters and him when it sounds like she is always talking down to them and their culture just because she just _knows better._

Dany actually wonders out loud what he expects from her, if he expects for her to express horror that he thinks she’s a fucking racist — if he wants for her to get on her fucking hands and knees as she tells him she can’t be racist because she does not see color and also, her best friend is Black. She wonders if this would make him feel better — for her to be a blank vessel so that he can impart all of his racial knowledge and biases into her.

He blows up. He says, “I actually don’t want to teach you _shit!_ I do not fucking want to teach white people _nothing!_ But you should want to fucking know things about _me!_ You should have a _fucking interest_ in the shit that I am interested in!” He has figured out that he has become deeply bitter and resentful — that she has consistently indicated that she has no natural curiosity about his cultural background.

“I speak Dothraki!” she shouts back. “I can actually speak _your language!”_

He shouts, “You didn’t learn it for me!”

She says, _“So?_ The sun doesn’t fucking rise and set on you, Drogo!”

He says, “Did I fucking ever say _it did!”_

“Oh my God, we gotta go,” she says, looking at the time on her cell phone. “We’re running late.”

 

 

  
As Obara puts down baked veggies and a tray of prosciutto-wrapped chicken breasts — as they all appropriately ooh and ahh and Obara says it’s really not a big fucking deal — as Yara eagerly tries to gossip about Grey, Missy tells Yara she wants no spoilers about Grey. She doesn't need a sneak peek at whatever crazy shit Grey is surely going to say to her on Monday. She wants to be pleasantly dumbstruck or horrified in real time.

Missy just knows that everything that goes into Yara gets filtered through Yara’s brain and spat out through Yara’s mouth. Missy also knows that Yara, just like Drogo, is Team Grey For Life even though Missy has been friends with Yara for longer, and they’ve been in the trenches together and have shared a lot of closeness together over the years. But Missy supposes that she just doesn’t make Yara laugh with really mean jokes like Grey does. Missy has been told, by Obara and Ygritte, that sometimes the old adage is true. Sometimes, hos just ain’t loyal.

And sometimes, ho just doesn’t know what’s good for her. Like, is there any logic to how obsessed Missy is with Grey? No. There is not. Yeah, he makes cool shit but so does Yara’s dad, and Missy is not clamoring to get on Papa Greyjoy’s joystick.

“Oh that’s disgusting,” Yara says to Obara. “And our dad is way too racist to go for Missandei.” Yara is cracking herself and only herself up.

“He is not even that cute,” Obara says. And she’s talking about Grey, but her friends are initially unclear on this and think she’s talking about Yara’s dad, who is definitely a middle-aged white man and not cute because he’s really mean.

In Obara’s point of view — she only sees Grey a few times a year, usually at special events. At such events, he just stands around like a total snob, not talking to anyone who isn’t one of his friends. In between these sightings, Obara generally only hears about him when Missandei’s idiot brain and heart gets filled with a shit ton of optimism — that he’s different and that he has _changed._ Obara just has to listen as Missy talks with this raw vulnerability of someone who just keeps fucking hoping against all hope that if she wants it enough and if she tries hard enough, she could compensate for the entirety of some fucking ordinary guy’s disengagement. And then weeks will go by or months will go by. And invariably, Missandei gets completely crushed and decimated by this piece of shit who is not good-looking enough to be such a fucking asshole. Obara doesn’t _get it._ She doesn’t get it _at all._

And _now,_ it’s about to happen again. It’s about to happen _again._ And why exactly are they all supposed to sit around and indulge Missandei in her delusion that it’s going to be fucking _different_ this time around? Because it’s not. He fucking _sucks._ He will never fucking _change._

“Hey,” Ygritte says softly. “Maybe we can talk about something else?”

“No, it’s totally fine,” Missy says. “I’m okay with this. I mean, I hear you. I can’t really dispute anything you are saying. I understand that you are frustrated, and I know you are frustrated because you care.”

Missandei generally still gets her feelings a little bit hurt by the stuff Obara says about Grey. But there’s not really a point in getting defensive over it anymore. There’s really nothing to defend. She _does_ keep hoping it'll will be different. Like, Obara is not wrong.

“But why do we even do the stupid things we do?” Missy asks. “Why did it take you so long to start leaving a job you hate and knew wasn’t any good for you? Why did Yara sleep with your sister even though the sex wasn’t good and she knew it was not gonna go anywhere?” Missy gestures to Yara, as she says, “You honestly keep throwing me under the bus. So I randomly threw that in there as retribution.”

“Respect,” Yara says, reaching over to pat Missy on the back.

Theon reaches out and knocks on the table. He has developed this habit because he’s so soft-spoken now that if he doesn’t signal that he’s about to speak, sometimes people miss the beginning of his sentences. He says, “Why do I hate feeling like I’m trapped in Yara’s house as I simultaneously do very little to leave the place?”

“Bro!” Yara says, laughing and reaching out to ruffle his hair. “You left the house tonight, though!”

“Yeah, I did!” He laughs a little bit, too. “By the way,” he says, directing his comment to Obara. “Grey is actually great. He comes over all the time, and he makes dinner for my sister. And we all take walks around the block together in dead silence sometimes, so I can stretch my legs without being bombarded with Yara’s commentary. He’s good at that kind of stuff.”

 

 

  
Grey says, “Oh my God, what the fuck?” when they arrive at the nearest nail salon. He says, “No.”

“Man, it’s great,” Pod says. “Trust me. I bash the crap out of my feet on the job all the time. And man, it’s just good to take care of yourself.” He nudges Grey. “Plus, you will definitely hate this and feel super uncomfortable. So it will be new anxiety for you focus on, instead of the ongoing anxiety you have. Like, mix it up! Also, you can practice mindfulness and being present as we get pedicures.”

“What the fuck, Pod?” Grey says. “Wow.”

 

 

  
Aside from her brother and her dead family, Dany probably has one really sore spot: the death of Aggo. Whenever she thinks about him, such emotion comes out of her — so this is why she generally refrains from thinking about him.

In the car, she tells Drogo that this actually isn’t the first time she’s had this exact fight with someone. She’s lived through this once before already. Someone else has already accused her of being a fucking racist. Except back then, she was sixteen years old and just scared and alone and in love. So she let those words just dig into her very core. She started going to a community center to take language classes, and she spent hours every night studying. She spent hours with his mother, trying to learn how to cook their foods for him, for when they were married. She spend fucking _hours_ upon _hours_ training herself through immersion, on what it means and what it is to be Dothraki. And none of her efforts were ever enough. She could hypothetically know everything intellectually with a greater grasp that any of them because she studied it so much — but she didn’t live it, and it’s not in her blood — and so it was never enough, and she was never enough. She was always going to be on the outside.

And she was very young and sensitive back then — so it probably hurt her a lot. She probably carries over a lot of lingering bitterness and pain from that time in life. This is probably why she says the things she does to Drogo sometimes. He is interpreting it as racism. It might actually _be_ racism. But it’s also _pain._

She tells Drogo that his family makes her feel like she’s on the outside. Except she’s older now, so she’s not stupid enough to believe that she can change the situation. She doesn’t even think she should try or that she should want to. Because what she _does know_ about the Dothraki is that they have had so much taken from them by people who look like her. There probably should be spaces that she can never inhabit because she’s not one of them. This is why she doesn’t bother kissing Drogo’s mom’s ass. She doesn’t want to be fake and inauthentic. She doesn’t want to come off like she thinks she can integrate before she ends up taking from them. She tells him that it’s fucking obnoxious when white people speak Dothraki.

She says that he actually speaks two languages really fluently. Missandei speaks a dozen languages really well. Grey can speak three languages. It’s not a big fucking deal when _they_ switch languages. But it becomes a big fucking deal if _she_ does. And it looks like appropriation. So that is why she doesn’t open her fucking mouth. She tells Drogo that she sees where he comes from. And that is why she will not touch it.

She tells Drogo, “I loved him with _everything_ I had and _everything_ I was capable of. And he _abandoned_ me by _dying.”_ And she starts to cry because the memory of him always makes her cry. “You don’t _come back_ from that kind of experience. You just carry it forward.”

 

 

  
The rest of dinner is pretty much fine. They all get on Obara’s case for being addicted to unhappiness, and that is probably why she is always pissed off about something. They all tell Obara that it can be hard to let go of that kind of toxicity because there’s a lot of comfort to be derived from self-identifying as a truth-telling badass. But truth? Obara is not a truth-telling badass. She’s just a really good friend, who is a badass, who is really fucking bitchy sometimes. Like, that’s her actual identity.

She takes it pretty well. She’s been drinking a lot of wine, so she takes the criticism really well. She promises them that she’ll work on it — be less judgemental. She promises Missandei that if Grey happens to fucking not tear apart Missandei’s heart with his teeth and his bare hands _again_ — then Obara will surely love to have him over for the next dinner party with mediocre food. She will be glad to give him the billionth shot at showing her just why all the fucking women in her life are so fucking obsessed with him.

Ygritte raises her hand and says, “I’m not obsessed with him.”

 

 

  
When Pod asks Grey how he’s liking his pedicure, Grey tells Pod that it’s just what he expected. He loves that a stranger is touching him — like skin-to-skin even. He loves that there’s a fucking language barrier, and he can’t tell this young girl that he’s really sorry that she has to work in a subservient job because she was born in the wrong place at the wrong time in the wrong circumstances and is like, a fucking child bride or something.

“Dude, I totally understand you,” his pedicurist says, not even pausing in her aggressive massaging of his calf. “My parents own this shop. I help them out during university break. I’m not a child bride. I was born here.”

“What the fuck?” Grey says, as heat just creeps over his entire face. Pod is similarly mortified and frozen in his own massage chair.

“Why did you think I didn’t speak your language?”

“Uh, because when we came in, we spoke to your mom?” When they came in, a diminutive woman barked for them to take any seats they wanted. And then she barked at the girl in-language — who they now know is her daughter — to help them. And then there was just a shit ton of miming and gesturing — and he made a lot of assumptions and just forgot to ever fucking say hello to her or start up a conversation with her like she is a human being. Oh God, he is _great._

“Like, people speak more than one language sometimes,” she tells him. She is so fucking ticked at him for calling her a child bride because that would be some serious racist shit if his white friend had said it. She is dealing with fucking racism when she thought she was going to have a chill wind-down to her night.

Grey thinks that this is awesome. Just really, really awesome. Pod was right. Grey now has just a bunch of new anxiety that is completely overshadowing all of the other anxiety he had. He still has so much pedicure to _get through._ They have only _just started._ This is _great._

 

 

  
Drogo loves that Dany is crying. He loves that he’s the kind of guy that is so easily moved by a woman’s tears and feels a compulsion to give her whatever shit she wants, if only she’d just stop crying.

He commits himself to not doing that though. He makes himself not act like his old self. He just waits for her to pull herself together as he parks the car. He waits for her to dig into her purse to pull out her makeup bag so she can touch up her face.

He touches her back as they wait for the elevator that will go up to the lobby. He asks, “Do I remind you of him?”

She says, “Sometimes. Sometimes it’s really stark, how much you remind me of him.”

He asks, “Do you think this is part of the reason why you are with me?”

She says, “Sometimes I wonder this.”

“He sounds like he was cool.”

She laughs softly. She says, “He was very cool.”

 

 

  
Yara is helping Obara dish out some dessert — bread pudding because it’s pretty easy to throw together stale bread and a custard — as the rest of their friends hang out in the living room.

After Yara tastes the bread pudding, she admits that it’s kind of dry and kind of plain, which causes Obara to go, “Well, shit.” And Yara tells Obara to not worry about it, as Yara pulls open Obara’s freezer and fridge doors. She finds a carton of ice cream and some berry jam. She zaps the jam in the microwave and then she starts plopping spoonfuls of ice cream on the bread pudding. As the ice cream softens and melts, Yara says it’s like a creme Anglaise. And also, people are dumb. People generally love shit with ice cream on it.

“Are you calling our friends dumb?” Obara says, getting on her toes to watch Yara drizzle hot jam over the melting ice cream.

Yara laughs. She says, “I guess I just did, huh?” She carves out a little bite of pudding with her spoon before pulling some ice cream and preserves over it. She holds out the bite to Obara, who kind of laughs before leaning forward to take the entire thing into her mouth.

Yara makes herself return the laugh, kind of nervously and awkwardly. And then she says, “Verdict?”

“Oh my God,” Obara says kind of quietly through her tasting and swallowing. “It’s _so good.”_

 

 

  
Grey tips the young woman like, fifty percent. Because he’s not above blood money. He shakes his head at Pod and says, “Thanks for that. That was very relaxing.”

 

 

 

 


	53. Missy packed a bag

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> OMG, it's finally Monday! This means that Grey and Missy are finally going to have the relationship talk.

 

 

 

When Grey drops Pod off at the airport, he has to deal with all of these words about how much Pod appreciates his friendship and how much Pod cares about him and wishes him well. It’s like getting a bright light shone into his eyes, so Grey has to look away so that he is not blinded.

He reaches out to grab Pod in a hug.

 

 

  
Pretty much everyone has told him some variation of how he needs to fucking nut the fuck up, whether this means killing the thing he’s got going on with Missandei for good, or jumping in whole hog — Yara’s phrasing — into a relationship. Grey has been told that the in-between sex-only relationship he was engaging in with a woman who fucking _loves him_ is real fucking chickenshit, cowardly, and just kind of bastardly — and not because he’s a man taking advantage of a woman, but because she fucking _loves him_ so obviously she wants more, and he knows that and is doing nothing besides selfishly sticking his dick inside of her — again, Yara’s phrasing.

He knows he’s a real asshole. Beyond being told this from multiple directions, he’s also been weighed down by a ton of guilt — and that probably plays into his over-eating.

He has nothing going on on Sunday, so he actually goes into the office to do work — and also to _obsess_ over this Missandei thing properly — _for hours._ He starts whiteboarding it. He starts creating a T chart of pros and cons — the overwhelming pro is that he gets to be with her and have sex with her — the overwhelming con is that it all could eventually goes to shit, destroying him into a million pieces so that he cannot even focus on work, so his entire livelihood and the livelihoods of like, his entire staff and Drogo gets sucked up into nothing. They just all end up destitute.

This general fatalistic train of thought kind of inspires him to storyboard out a bunch of scenarios — ways in which this relationship can develop and flow. There’s a story in which it works out and like — they fucking share a bank account and bicker over who gets to sleep on the left side of the bed — the superior side. And then there are _a bunch_ of other stories that end in worldwide devastation.

And _that_ inspires him to do a flowchart, so that it’s more reasoned out than the bonkers shit that is in his head, so that he can perhaps start to quantify the likelihood that this will be world-destroying.

After three hours — the conference room looks really insane. And he wants to snap a picture of all of it and send it to her, with a terrifying cautionary note. Something like, “I want to consume your soul.” Except knowing her, she’d laugh and think it was cute. She _would_ think his fucking insanity is real cute.

 

 

Drogo is with Dany when Grey’s messages come through — there are so many pictures! So Drogo’s phone hangs for a bit as the images download. There are about eight of them.

After they download and after he sees what these pictures are all about, Drogo loudly cracks up, rolling his body around in Dany’s dining chair. This causes her to pause in her cooking — she’s making him food for the first time in ever. She’s also making him Dothraki food because he wants to criticize the shit out of it and tell her she doesn’t fucking know what she’s doing.

She has a spatula in hand. Her hair is limp and unstyled. She has no makeup or pants on. She’s wearing one of his t-shirts. They are so fucking domestic now. Some garlic is sizzling in oil as she says, “What?”

“Babe,” he says, holding up his phone. “You have _got to_ check this out.”

 

 

  
Dany actually gets kind of ticked when she sees all of the stuff Grey has written down about Missandei. She is actually kind of offended on Missandei’s behalf because some of the reasons include shit like, “Ass might be a little too big?” coupled with, “Doesn’t look great underweight.”  
  
“Oh my God,” Dany says, swiping the picture on the screen so that it’s even bigger. Like, the word ass scribbled in Grey’s chicken scratch is super fucking huge and blurry on Drogo’s phone now. “He is so fucking _dead.”_ She starts enthusiastically and vigorously writing out a text to Grey on Drogo’s phone.

“Baby, what are you doing?”

“I’m going to tell this motherfucker what’s the what — _that’s what._ What the fuck? Her ass is too big? No, _it’s not.”_

“Damn, baby. Got a little ethnic there. And he said it _might_ be a _little_ too big.” Drogo is trying not to laugh at full-force here. “I mean, he’s moderating his opinions a fair bit.” Drogo reaches for his phone. He says, “Dan, at least chew him out on your phone. So he knows who’s talking to him.”

 

 

  
When Grey gets like, five texts in succession from Drogo-but-really-Dany, just aggressively laying the fuck into him for something she wasn’t even supposed to see — Grey is all annoyed at Drogo for being disloyal now — Grey rolls his eyes because he doesn’t really need another person telling him that he’s an idiot. Obviously he’s an idiot. But one with a fucking process.

 

 

  
After about five hours of work — of mulling over things back and forth and sideways — he snaps pictures of all of it before he erases everything. He takes cleaner and really wipes everything down so it’s clean and utterly blank. He would fucking kick his own ass so hard if one of the staff members came across this mess that he wrote about Missandei and their relationship.

 

 

  
When she gets to the office at eight on Monday morning, he’s already there. And he’s the only one there, so she trots her way into his office and announces, “It’s Monday!” throwing her arms out wide and all dramatically. She says, “This might be the first time in my life I’ve actually been excited for Monday.”

He says, “Calm your enthusiasm. We still have many hours to get through.”

She cannot calm her enthusiasm. She is in a great mood. She’s fairly confident that he will not dick her over again — she’s confident about this because she feels like he’d find her, and he’d tell her right when he knows that he doesn’t want to actually do this with her. He wouldn’t wait until Monday — he wouldn’t wait until the bitter end to screw her over. So she’s fairly confident that this day is going to end well for her. Also, if he fucks her over, she will just fucking kill him. She will just fucking murder him with her bare hands. So she’s not worried.

 

 

  
The day _drags_ for the both of them, though in different ways. She feels like a kid that just has to wait a little bit longer to open her present. Her present is his pants — or rather, the stuff inside his pants.

Grey feels sick to his stomach, like he shit out diarrhea, ate it for some reason, and then is trying to hold it down as his body is like, what the fuck, trying to expel it.

He’s spectacularly cranky and anti-social. He doesn’t even want to talk to any of the kids. When Pyp asks him how his weekend was, he almost loses his shit and almost tells them to just stop dicking around and just get the fuck to work already — he doesn’t need for them to know his entire fucking life story.

In reality, he says to Pyp, “It’s fine.” Because she doesn’t like it when he unleashes on the staff for no reason. She is way weird like that.

Drogo is the probably the only person he can deal with, with any sense of normalcy — but Drogo has to run off to a shoot within an hour of getting to the office. So Grey does not get an opportunity to remind Drogo that the shit Grey sends to Drogo is confidential. Drogo cannot be fucking showing shit to Dany because Dany is a bitch with no honor sometimes — or too much honor — the two things are sometimes interchangeable. The point is Dany will tell Missandei. And he would fucking like to tell Missandei, _himself,_ that her ass is a touch too big in certain situations.

 

 

  
Meera is still completely oblivious — a testament to how well Grey and Missandei have compartmentalized and sequestered their sexing so that it never touches the work or the office — so Meera, an avid fan of romantic comedies even though she will never qualify herself as someone who actually likes trite love stories, still thinks they are utterly perfect together but just _don’t know it yet._

In Grey’s estimation, Meera just wastes a whole fuckton of time during their staff meeting talking about fucking stupidass shit — their weekends again. But Missandei told him that most people are inferior and not like him — they can’t go one-hundred at all hours of the day. They need to have their feelings managed and coddled and spend five minutes at the start of every meeting asking about how everyone is, even though everyone is clearly fucking fine and normal.

“What about you, Missy?”

“Oh!” Missandei says, managing to look surprised that she was asked about her weekend, even though it was fucking obvious that her turn was coming. Like, they are going around the fucking room with this shit. Oh God, is he about to hook up with an idiot? “Well, on Saturday, I went to my friend Obara’s house to have dinner,” she says. “And then yesterday, I was with my family all day.”

“Hey,” Lommy says. “Whatever happened to that supermodel that wanted to bang you? Did you ever get back to him?”

“Lommy!” Meera snaps. “Shut up!”

“Hey,” Grey says in a deadpan. “That’s my line.”

 

 

  
He’s entirely garbage the entire day. He’s too distracted to do much good work, so all the work he ends up doing is administrative or quality control. This does not bode well for the future at all.

His terrible brain just keeps fabricating reasons to back out. He’s been telling his brain to just shut the fuck up.

 

 

  
At the end of the long day, he continues having a hard time getting the fuck to dinner with Missandei, this time because Meera just won’t go the fuck home already. Meera keeps lingering and talking to them as he shuts everything down. Meera is asking them a lot of stupid questions about hobbies, like he even gives a shit that she likes to crochet in front of the TV.

“I like to read before bed,” Missandei offers.

“Ooh, books are great,” Meera says. “Grey, do you like to read, too?”

He does not even answer her because he’s so pissed. His pretense is that he’s across the room shutting off the lights in the conference room. He’s pretending he didn’t hear her.

“Grey likes to read,” Missandei offers. “He’s generally always working on memoirs or biographies. He generally likes nonfiction, but there are a few authors he likes that write fiction.”

“Oh, wow,” Meera says. “You know a lot about his reading preferences. You guys must be pretty good friends, huh?”

“I guess?” Missandei says. And then more firmly, she says, “Yes, yes we are. We’ve been friends for a long time.”

“I mean, you wouldn’t know who his favorite authors are if you weren’t really good friends, right? Do you guys hang out outside of work?”

“Um, not as much as Drogo and Grey do, if that’s what you’re asking.” Missandei kind of laughs. “We’re not close like _that._ But really, who really has the kind of closeness that they have?” Missandei laughs again, this time it sounds authentic and hearty and real. “It’s really special and rare, I think.”

“Yeah yeah, sure. But _your guys’_ friendship seems special, too,” Meera says, trying to steer this conversation back on track. She really does not want to be talking about Grey and Drogo’s magical Halley’s Comet friendship right now.

“Meera,” Grey finally says. “Will you go the fuck home? I’m trying to close up this joint right now so that I can leave, and Missandei can leave — so that we all _can leave.”_

 

 

  
Missandei laughs at him when they are finally alone. She runs her hands over his back and shoulders as he locks the door. She softly tells him that she thinks that Meera like — weirdly wants them to be together. It’s odd, and it’s also pretty cute.

“It’s just odd,” Grey says witheringly, turning around and pocketing his keys. “I’m her boss. You’re her boss. She should be focused on not getting her ass fired. Her current preoccupation is inappropriate.”

“Aw,” Missandei says, touching his cheek for a moment before she grabs his hand and tugs him toward the elevator. “So cranky because you’re hungry. We’ll get you fed soon enough.”

Grey just loves it when she talks to him like he’s a baby. He tells it to her out loud, too. He says, “I love it when you infantilize me.”

It actually touches on these fights that they used to have — in the past — the first time they were together. They both remember these protracted arguments in which he accused her mothering the fuck out of him and he told her he didn’t find that shit sexy. She remembers her stunned surprise, because all she was trying to do was take care of him.

In the elevator, for the four seconds it takes to ride down, she body blocks him into a corner. She braces her hands on the hand rails. She presses her breasts into his chest and she tilts her pelvis toward his. And she says, “I make you feel like a little kid?” She lowers her voice. “I don’t make you feel like a man?”

He’s real tense — in that good and sexual kind of way. And she finds it real hot. He finds her real hot, too. He says, “That’s not —”

And then the doors open and then he _pushes_ her off of him because he’s so panicked that someone from work is watching them. She almost trips and eats floor, but her hand clenches on the rail and she manages to stay upright. She says, “Grey! _Really!”_

He says, “I’m sorry!” as his hands touch her arms and her hips to make sure she’s steady. “Are you okay!”

 

 

  
They bicker about the driving situation. He tells her that he wants to drive to the restaurant — and he tells her that he can drop her off at her car again later when it’s time to part ways and go home — because he’s a control freak and he would just rather drive. She is perplexed and tells him that he spent _years_ being driven around and now it’s suddenly a problem for him? He counters that by telling her he doesn’t see what the big deal is. Also, she’s driven him a lot — and he’d just like to return the favor, sort of. Plus, he just wants to fucking drive his car! Shit! This isn’t a fucking big deal!

Her arms are crossed, and she’s kind of tapping her foot. Because so far — this new thing between them is going _amazingly._ It really bodes well for the future. She says, “Okay, I’m going to level with you here, man. I want to drive because I have a bag of my shit in the trunk. I have clothes and makeup and junk like that in my bag so that I can get ready for work tomorrow at your place. Because I don’t want to go home tonight. I want to stay with you because I just want to be _with you._ I know it’s totally presumptuous and you know, a touch slutty. But God, don’t slut-shame me, okay? We want what we want.” She kind of laughs at herself. She presses her palm to her cheek because it’s a little heated now. She adds, “I mean, have things changed for you? I know we’re jumping ahead already, and we haven’t even gotten to dinner. And I didn’t plan on having this part of the talk right now already — but you are a _fucking asshole._ So, do you want to still be together?”

He sees what he has done to her. She’s so nervous and scared and also anxious — because she always has to steel herself for rejection. What he has only qualified as self-protection because he is self-centered has actually been rejection for her. He knows what rejection feels like — it’s nerve-wracking and terrifying. He sees that the difference between the two of them is that he keeps doubling down on avoidance because he fears rejection — and she keeps fighting to leave herself open to pain. It is fucking nuts. She is ridiculously brave, and he is a fucking coward.

He can’t even kiss her right now. Like, he knows this would be a really fucking awesome moment to kiss her and make them both weak in the knees from how awesome he is at kissing her. But it is broad daylight and they are in public. There are like, pedestrians walking back and forth behind them.

However, he does say, “Yeah, I still feel the same way. Um, let’s go to your fucking car and grab your bag real quick. I still want to drive. But yeah, let’s like, _definitely_ bring that thing with us.”

She’s so _fucking relieved._ She laughs out loud in gratitude, actually. And in response to that — which honestly took a massive amount of emotional effort for him to say because he’s articulating what he wants from her pretty baldly — she honors the effort by saying, “Oh my God, you’re such a slut for my body. God, you want me _so bad.”_

“Stop!” he snaps. “Don’t make it weird!”

“I thought you like it when sex gets a little weird.”

“Oh my God, shut up. I'm really self-conscious!”

 

 

 

 

 


	54. Boy gets girl (poor girl)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After a lot of sitting on his ass and doing nothing, after a lot of self-sabotage — Grey finally wins over his lady — through insults.

 

 

 

During dinner — which is at this pretentious pizza place with a brick oven he is completely in love with — he guzzles down beer full-well knowing that it will eventually make him need to pee every fifteen minutes, but he has to because he is nervous — and he actually pulls out prints of his whiteboarding and shows them to her. He says, “Holy shit, this beer is fantastic.” He starts swiveling around in his seat to see what else is on tap.

Missandei is stunned by all of the pages, and the writing is small so she digs into her purse for her reading glasses in order to properly look at all of it. When the server comes back to take their pizza order — clam and pesto and potato and olive oil, and Grey says it like it’s a duh even though it’s completely not a duh — the server chats with Grey a little bit on the beers. The server says they have switched their main offering to a brewery called White Pine, and those guys do really good work. Grey talks about how he’s tired of the overabundance of IPAs in King’s Landing. The servers says that for many restaurants, it’s about what sells and the stouts or the wheatier beers just don’t move the way IPAs do. But they are trying to find ways expand the selection, part of which involves educating customers or making certain suggestions.

Then their server asks Grey and Missandei if they are working — and if they’d like to move to a bigger table so they can spread out more.

“Oh no,” she says, looking up from the sheets of paper. “We’re okay.”

 

 

  
She asks him how she is supposed to respond to all of this stuff that she is looking at — how she is expected to respond to his breakdown of her flaws. Also the list of her body parts, ranked from favorite to least favorite.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I just felt like I should let you know where my head was at.”

 

 

  
She tells him that comparatively, it seems clarity comes way easier for her than it does for him. For her, it’s just a feeling. She doesn’t really need to list out things about him to know he’s worth it to her. She just feels it in her gut — she just knows that she loves him. She tells him that if she were to fabricate a bunch of reasons — like he has — the negative stuff would probably actually overwhelm his positive qualities. But that’s because the charting doesn’t take into account the fact that things are weighted differently. How she positively feels about him probably takes up ninety percent of the weight. How much she respects him probably takes up seventy percent. How much she believes in him is probably one hundred percent.

He’s like, “Missandei, those percentages all add up to more than one hundred.”

She says, “These things actually lay on top of each other. They aren’t actually fighting and competing for a finite amount of space. You need to expand the way your mind works.”

“Oh, shit,” he says appreciatively, tipping his beer glass to her.

 

 

  
She’s honestly not loving all of the whiteboarding that happened. Because some of the stuff she is reading kind of makes her feel bad about herself. She flips the sheets around before she admits this to him. She tells him, “I think you hurt my feelings a little bit — with this stuff.”

He wrote stuff about how she’s good at pretending to be different types of people, depending on who she is around. She is good at catering to other people and that is probably mystifying to him because he is consistently himself in all situations, take him or leave him. He wrote that she is sometimes kind of too preoccupied with what people think of her.

This hurts because she has spent probably the last seven years trying to _not_ be that person anymore. She thought she has done a pretty good job, so it’s a bit of a bummer that someone whose opinion she really respects does not really feel the same way.

And then there is just a lot of stuff about her body that he semi-likes and likes and stuff he’s not crazy about. And she’s not sure that she can really help _any_ of these things. Her body is what it is.

“You’re angry,” he says — he’s guessing. He’s tensing up, too.

“No, I’m just kind of sad.”

“Why are you sad?”

“Because this is what you think of me.” She kind of tears up a little bit — because the effect of the whiteboarding was delayed. Now, she kind of feels _more_ than just a little hurt by it. She probably feels _a lot_ hurt by it actually. She sniffs, blinking back her tears. She wipes her nose with her napkin.

 

 

  
He is probably still subconsciously trying to sabotage this relationship. There’s probably still a fucking idiotic and terrible part of him that is trying to prove to her that he is not worth it — just daring her to leave. On her end, she didn’t expect to be confronted with a challenge right off the bat. She thought they’d have a little reprieve — a honeymoon period of sorts. But here she is, poring over a bunch of new content after an entire workday spent poring over content.

She tells herself to stop being so sensitive. She reminds herself that she knows how he thinks and how he operates. She tells herself that she makes observations about his idiosyncrasies all day — and this is completely in line with who he is and what he’s all about. And she keeps insisting that she loves him unconditionally — and that has to mean that she loves him even when he is unintentionally _being an asshole_ like this. The trade off here is that he is always honest — he is never ever dishonest with her. It might not be something he is capable of. He is truthful to a fault. She probably cannot dictate the form that his truthfulness takes.

She says, “You think my ass is fat?”

His face falls. He says, “Missandei, I love your ass.”

“Okay.” Her face is so hot and so damp and kind of sweaty. “But you wrote that it’s a little too big?”

“Oh, I meant that sometimes during sex, the mass of it gets in the way in like, certain positions.”

“Oh,” she says dully. “Well, that’s not what you wrote. You didn’t contextualize.”

“Yeah, sorry. I was doing that part in a bit of rush. And then I had another thought, and I just moved on really fast.”

“Okay,” she says. “And so I see here that you have one whopping reason why you want to be with me. And it’s sex-related. And I also see you have a _million fucking reasons_ why being with me will result in — um — worldwide famine?”

“Okay, that’s kind of funny,” he says. “You gotta admit that’s kind of funny.”

“Yeah,” she says blankly. “It’s funny. I get it.”

 

 

  
When their pizzas come, they just start eating in relative silence. She doesn’t want to just say nothing to him, but she honestly needs a break from him — from talking to him for a little bit. She understands what Yara meant now, when Yara told Missy that she was really in for it and that Grey is really, really romantic. It probably takes a really confident person to be with him. She can recall that her constantly shifting self-esteem was a bit of an issue the first time they went through this.

She swallows her bite and washes it down with a few gulps of beer before she wipes her mouth — wipes her lipstick clean off. She says, “Hey, I am fucking _awesome._ I am incredibly _patient_ with you. I’m so fucking _understanding_ and _supportive._ I fucking _never_ hold who you are against you. And I don’t think you captured _any of that_ in your shitty hundreds of pages that break down all of my fucking _flaws._ Either you want to be with me, or you _don’t.”_

“I want to be with you,” he says quietly. “The whiteboarding didn’t amount to much. I was trying to find reasons to back out. None of the reasons were good enough.”

 

 

  
She has the sheets of paper clenched in her greasy hands. She’s holding them up in the air, and she’s shaking them at him. She says, “This was rude! Like, you get that, right? I guess it’s cool if you think these things and you keep them in your head, but it’s rude to write it all down and then share it with me without any lead-in or explanation.”

“Um, I also shared it with Drogo,” he says reluctantly. “Who shared it with Dany.”

“Oh my God,” she says softy, incredulously. “That’s just fucking _awesome,_ Grey. Like, do you even understand where I’m coming from? Most of this stuff is overwhelmingly negative and really superficial.”

“I know,” he says, sighing. “I just don’t want to — I just want to be honest with you. I don’t want to hide anything from you anymore.”

“Well, fucking _filter it,”_ she says. “Edit it down. It’s like — is this your first day on the job? Don’t fucking give me _raw shit_ that is just incomprehensible. Just give me the fucking _story_ or the _takeaway.”_

“Okay, how you articulated that? That was great,” he says. “That was a really smart way to explain that. I love that you are smart. I totally get it. But Missandei, come on. It’s a little funny, right? Come on. I whiteboarded your merits. And then shared it with our friends.”

“Grey! Are you fucking _laughing_ like you think this shit is _funny?”_

 

 

  
He’s laughing because this is legitimately really funny. He’s a little bit looser now — and for no reason. It’s crazy — totally and completely fucking crazy because he’s been really stressed out and anxious for so long in regard to her — but now he magically just does not even give a fuck about the shit that he typically gives a fuck about.

He starts to explain to her why this is funny — because the joke definitely becomes funnier when he has to explain it. He tells her that instead of doing something normal like, oh — _not_ scribbling out a bunch of shit like he thinks he’s fucking John Nash — he did all of this stuff. And then he took pictures of it because he felt like he really needed a record of it for the sake of posterity. And instead of just relegating this into a dark corner of his journals and books somewhere, he actually forwarded this information onto Drogo because he somehow thought that was an okay thing to do. _And then,_ where other men would buy their ladies flowers or write up some sort of love note — Grey actually printed this shit out and gave it to her. Like it was a memento that was sure to make her feel really cherished and special. Like — it’s hilarious. It’s _really hilarious._ Because he’s a complete moron.

“I’m not laughing,” Missy promises him, folding her arms over her chest. “I’m not going to laugh and let you think that you’re charming and that this is okay.”

“It’s fine,” he says, chuckling. _“I_ think it’s funny. And I think that’s what’s most important.”

 

 

  
Dinner feels like an entire bust. Like, it is like a really bad date. He almost made her cry — on the basis of the shitty things he wrote about her. And then when she told him that it hurt her feelings — he laughed in her face. Basically.

When the check comes, he thinks it’s really funny to shove a hand at her face and to say, “Don’t worry — I’ve got this,” in front of their server even though their server doesn’t even know their context at all.

So their server actually awkwardly takes Grey’s credit card and just says, “Okay, I’ll be right back, guys.”

“You are being a real douchebag right now,” she says after the server is out of earshot.

“Yeah!” he says. “I _know!_ It’s _crazy,_ right?” He shrugs. “I guess I only have two modes. Either on the verge of a panic attack — or _this._ So do you want to go back to my place and have sex?” Upon her utter look of total and complete disdain, he laughs loudly. And then he reminds her. He says, “You _did say_ that you’re a sure thing.” 

 

 

He feels like he has already done everything in his power — he has done what he can — really creatively — to repulse her and scare her away — not just tonight, but probably over the entirety of the time they have known each other. He had prepubescent fat-skinny body when they met. He has told her, again and again in various ways, to stay the fuck away from him. And when she listened, he tortured her a whole bunch because he just missed her. And then she moved away. He burned the memory of her from his mind. And then she came back. And now they have this. There is probably nothing he can do that will drive her away for good. That’s probably what he has realized, over the course of dinner.

In his apartment, she tells him, “I came here to continue talking. I am _not_ having sex with you. You are _awful._ And I don’t think your awfulness should be rewarded.”

“Come here,” he says, plopping down on his couch. She’s still standing — in front of him. His hands graze her hips before he gently pulls her closer. He pushes up the hem of her shirt a little bit with his thumbs, exposing the skin on her stomach, which he starts kissing. He murmurs, “I’ve missed you.”

“You miss my body.”

“Yeah,” he says. “I also miss you.”

 

 

  
He tells her it won’t take him long to get her off. And she is like, oh, how fucking romantic and arrogant.

And against her better judgement, she lets him pull off her pants and underwear and she lets him put his mouth on her body. She initially kind of wants to be a bitch about it — and be completely and totally fucking _bored_ as he tries to get her off. But he takes a turn with everything. He takes off the rest of her clothes for instance, after he lays her down on his sofa. She tells him she doesn’t need to be all the way naked — and he tells her that he agrees. The clothing is optional. But it’s easier if she’s all the way naked. He looming over her, with his soft smile on his face, with his hand trailing up and down her skin, purposely avoiding certain areas, purposely keeping it chaste and clean.

She starts breathing heavily. And they haven’t even gotten anywhere. She grabs onto the back of his shirt, and she tries to wrap her bare legs around him. And she says, “I thought this was going to be real quick.”

“No, man. I totally lied to you so you’d let me take your clothes off.” He laughs at the words. “Oh my God, I am the best.”

 

 

  
“Let me take a picture of you,” he says pulling her hand off of her breast. She’s putting it there to like, preserve her modesty or whatever, which is weird. “You look like, so fucking _good_ right now. Fat ass notwithstanding.”

 _“No,_ Grey,” she says. She doesn’t even know how she got to this point with him. She doesn’t know how the entire night has just gotten the fuck away from her. “And my ass is not fat.”

“I fucking love your beautiful fat ass,” he says, laughing softly, rubbing his palm over her bottom before running his hand in between her legs like he doesn’t even give a fuck. She gasps and instinctively cinches her legs together. He chuckles. He asks, “Why not?”

She’s so doped up on the incoming threat of really great sex that she is having a hard time following him. She says, “What?”

“Why can’t I take a picture of you? Like, I’m a pro. I take pictures all day. I’d make this fat ass look a little bit smaller.”

He’s not even touching her ass anymore. He is fucking smearing his hand against everything in between her legs, and she is really bad at not letting him get away with this. She is lightly grinding down and trying to get a little more friction on her blood-flushed skin. Like, she doesn’t know how he got away with his terrible presentation and how she agreed to go back to his place. She doesn’t know how she is _naked_ on his couch right now. She doesn’t know how he has _negged and body-shamed_ her into getting all turned on. And she doesn’t know how she is groaning and trying to grab at him as he gets up, as this motherfucker walks over to his work table to pull off a camera. He wipes the hand that’s been feeling her up on his pants before he clicks on his camera on to check the battery.

“Grey, seriously — don’t take naked photos of me,” she says. “Because I know you. I know it’s not going to actually be one picture. It’s going to be many pictures. And I already took naked photos of myself. I don’t want you to be taking naked photos of me all a million times better than I did it — and then take all of the spotlight — and then I only become known as the woman that fucking _gets naked_ for pictures _all the time.”_

“Please?”

“What the fuck, man? You think that if you say please I’m just gonna go, oh, okay — and spread my ass cheeks for your camera lens?”

“Okay, I appreciate that you are coming to the table with ideas. I like the can-do attitude. However, I have a specific vision for this, so I’m gonna need for you to not art-direct me.”

 

 

  
This night is bizarre, and he really shouldn’t be getting away with all of the shit he is getting away with. Her downfall is that she adores him too much, and she thinks that the shitty things he says are actually really freaking hilarious. Her downfall is that it seems he has figured this out. He has figured out that she kind of loves how fucking awful he is.

She likes how he’s gotten away with his shit list of her flaws. She likes how he keeps calling her butt humongous, instead of apologizing for being a real bastard. She likes that he has created this situation where — in order for her to distract him from clicking away at her naked body with his camera — her hand is down his unzipped pants, loosely giving him a really nice handjob — and she’s thinking about transitioning this to a blow job. Because surely he cannot take pornographic pictures of her if his dick is in her mouth.

She says, “Oh my God, I’m a horrible role model.” And then she sees him reaching for his camera again. She says, _“Grey!”_

He says, _“Ahh!”_ and he curls his body inward in pain because she tugged too hard.

She actually looks like she regrets. She says, “Oh! I’m sorry, baby! Are you alright?” And then she says, “Wait! Why _the fuck_ am I apologizing to you!”

He laughs. He says, “Is this what you meant? When you said I like it when sex gets a little weird?”

 

 

  
At a point, the really elaborate and crazypants foreplay finally gets on her frayed nerves. They never established a safe word. But her safe word is her anger and frustration. She pushes his hand off of her body, and she says, “Seriously, Grey! You need to fucking put that camera away! Right now! I keep asking you to stop trying to take pictures of me. I feel really put on the spot and really self-conscious, and it’s not fun! I have also asked you _repeatedly_ to not take pictures of me right now, so I don’t get why you think it’s funny to act like you don’t hear me! You’re such a fucking jerk tonight! You’ve been kind of rude and mean to me all night! And some of it was hot, but some of it was just mean. What are you trying to do, man! Are you trying to make me lose my fucking _mind?_ Are you trying to make me cry? I don’t know why you think you’re entitled to my body! You’re such a punk! It’s not fair! It’s not like you’d ever let me take naked pictures of _you,_ not in a million years!”

“You want to take pictures of me? Why didn’t you say so? Okay.”

He’s sitting naked on his bed, all thoroughly kissed and all tousled around because she is so attracted to. To him, she says, _“What?”_

 

 

 

 


	55. Missy takes Grey's picture

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Missy takes photos of Grey in the buff. Shares with the world.

 

 

 

He basically lets her take photos of him with his bits hanging out because he’s really bad at remembering her nameday, buying her presents, expressing affection outside of the bedroom, paying her well-deserved compliments — just bad at a litany of things that other women would completely not put up with. He completely does not want to pose like a porn star and have these embarrassing pictures exist — but he’s been like, the most massive dickhole to her. So he owes her one. After this, they are even.

He says, “After this, we even. I don’t owe you nothing else. You can’t hold nothing against me. Slate is _blank.”_

She scrunches up her nose. She slowly says, “I don’t think that’s how it works?”

He laughs — nervously as he watches her stand up from the bed. He says, “It’s been a very long time since I’ve been in a relationship. I might not remember how it works.”

 

 

  
She’s legit so excited about this that she stops everything they are doing to scurry around the room, picking up items of clothing they have discarded — mostly his clothes because her garments were left out in the living room. She pulls on his t-shirt and even his jeans, weighted down by a leather belt. Both slide easily onto her body, which she is relieved by because she would’ve probably rammed her fist into his face repeatedly if she couldn’t get his jeans over her _gigantic ass._

She zips up and cinches the belt tightly around her waist as he watches her from where he is reclined on the bed. His erection is subsiding. His face is impassive and generally expressionless. Her hand rubs back and forth over the soft fabric of his tee, at the collar. Everything smells like him. She dressed herself because she thinks it’ll be more professional this way. She wrings her hands a little bit — a little unsure — and then she just makes a grab for the discarded camera lying in the bedsheets.

“Okay then,” he says, with a specific gleam in his eye, with a bare hint of amusement before he schools his expression back into relative blankness. “Where do you want me?”

“Um, do you want to sit over there?” She sounds very uncertain as she gestures to the armchair situated next to a side table and a bookcase in the corner of his bedroom.

He slowly stalks over to his chair, completely naked. He shows her his backside, and she runs her front teeth over her bottom lip as her face kind of flushes. The mundane casualness of his nakedness kind of kills her. He used to be naked around her like this all the time — many years ago, back when he loved her in a way that was very recognizable and obvious to her. These days, his nakedness is very targeted, wrapped around form and function.

He points to his chair. He says, “This one? You want me to sit here? In this?”

She frowns. She says, “Don’t be an asshole, okay?”

“Man, I’m not trying to be nothing. I’m just trying to decipher your direction. How do you want me to sit?”

 

 

  
“Okay,” she says, after she clicks off the bedroom lights and has him click on his table lamp. “Try not to get erect, okay? It’s going to ruin everything.”

He kind of smiles. He says, “I’ll do my best.” He’s twisting around in his leather armchair, which is one of those pivoting, reclining ones — but fancy. His bare feet are anchored to the floor. He says, “What do you want me to do?”

“What do you usually do in that chair?”

“Read. This is my reading chair.”

“What are you currently reading? Show me your books.” She pulls the camera up to her face and looks through the viewfinder, manually focusing, adjusting ISO, aperture, zooming in a touch, framing him.

“Oh shit!” He’s laughing as his swiveling gets a touch more enthusiastic. “This is going to be a little embarrassing,” he says, sounding almost bashful and reluctant.

“What? Are you reading porn?”

He reaches over and up and clamps his hands all at once over four books on his middle shelf. He pulls them off as she snaps a test photo. He settles the books in his lap as he start to flip some pages.

She says, “Can you shift the pile to the side a little. You’re covering your penis.”

“Oh,” he says. “Yeah, wouldn’t want that, would we?” And then he laughs again — she snaps a picture — and he says, “This is so fucking crazy.”

 

 

  
He tells her that he’s not reading porn. It’s like, worse. He holds up the first book, and he tells her that he’s been in a bit of mood since things ended with her — he’s not sure what to call it — because he probably shouldn’t call it a break up. But there’s been a theme to what he’s been reading and this is probably going to be super illuminating. He tells her it’s really actually fucking funny that he’s sitting around naked with his books and telling her, of all people, about them.

He holds up the first one. He tells her it’s a book written by a psychiatrist that explains what happens to the brains of children who have been severely traumatized and the science behind that — as well as the recovery process and treatment.

Grey then flips that book over and holds up the second one. He tells her this one is about the science behind bereavement and how humans are kind of hard-coded with a sophisticated resilience that extends far beyond the five stages of grief that people are always going on about.

He holds up a third book, and he tells her that this was a random and really good find. This is a memoir from eighty years ago, about a writer who voluntarily checked himself into an insane asylum because he had no other way of coping or treating his alcohol addiction. Grey tells her this book is stunning — honest and stark and just so sad.

He holds up a fourth book, and he doesn’t really need to tell her what it is, but he says it out loud anyway. He tells her he’s reading _yet another_ biography about a Black male artist. Right now it’s the unauthorized bio of Jay-Z.

 

 

  
She has maybe about twelve photos under her belt, and she’s reviewing them and smiling at the screen. She asks him if he happens to have any nude self-portraits from the period before his surgery — before puberty, basically.

He tells her that he doesn’t. He actually regrets it now — but back then, he was just too ashamed and too self-hating and too hard on his own body to take pictures of it. There are few pictures of him from high school. There are few pictures of him in college. He can probably hit up his doctors for naked body pictures, though, if he really wanted them.

“You know, I saw your body naked back then, too. And I didn’t think there was anything especially odd about it. I was still fond of that body. Because it was attached to you.”

“Well thanks,” he says. “That’s super corny.”

“I know!” she says. “I knew the second it left my mouth that you were going to shit on it.”

 

 

  
She lies down with him in his bed, and she shows him the photos she took, holding the camera over their heads.

He says, “Oh, you got my face.”

“Yeah,” she says softly, twisting her head so that she can kiss him real quick on the cheek. “It’s a nice face.”

“It’s pretty nuts to be on the other side of the camera,” he says. “It feels just fucking terrifying, actually. I know how I feel and what I see when I look at people through a lens — I just generally think people are beautiful. But being the other side, I was super self-conscious and nervous and constantly wondered if I like, looked weird and disgusting —”

“Oh my God, you don’t look disgusting,” she says, laughing quietly.

“It was a fascinating experience,” he says, talking as if he didn’t hear her reassurance. And then he points to the screen. “I like this one.”

“I like that one the most, too.” It’s the picture of him laughing as he’s reaching up to put his books back on the shelf — and he made her laugh too, so her hands shook just the barest bit when she took the picture. It’s slightly unfocused and soft for that reason.

“Can I post it?”

“Missandei.”

“What?”

“Like, you can see my dick. And my face. Which makes it super easy for people to associate my face with my dick.”

 

 

  
She’s not really trying to convince him to let her ‘gram his nudie. She knows that it was really hard to let the world see her naked body and to allow the world to respond however it wanted to her body. It was a difficult experience, and he’s extremely private.

But she says his face needs to be shown because they need to know his name, and they need to know who he is. She tells him she likes mundane nudity because their bodies have historically been so purposefullly hypersexualized or desexualized and co-opted and then appropriated and then cast aside when they fall out of favor. She tells him that there’s something especially interesting about the male body — how male nudes are rare especially in comparison to female nudes, which are seen as more desirable. She tells him that a lot of the time, male nudes are faceless — and again, that is why it’s important for her to show his beautiful face.

When male nudes are not faceless, then they are shown sans dick and are all androgynous and six-pack-y and sterile and safe — because the penis is so dangerous and threateningly sexual all the time — and then there is his skin color and the dangerous edge that that casts over everything.

Then she giggles. She rolls over on top of him. She groans as his hands automatically start to run down her body. She says, “I also like the voyeuristic quality of the photo. I like that I took it. I like what that looks like.”

“What does it look like?” he asks, a ghost of a smile gracing his face.

“It looks like someone who loves you took that picture. It looks like you belong to me.”

 

 

  
The entire staff sees the naked picture of him before they even get to the office because they all follow Missandei on Insta and Jojen was online the second the picture was posted. He saw — then he spat out his soda all over himself and his phone screen — and then he got _everyone in the office_ except for the bosses and supervisors on group chat and told them to go to Missandei’s Instagram right away.

Due to the small screens of mobile phones, Grey’s penis is more an impression more than it is a real thing. A lot of the initial group texting was Meera going OMGGGG!!!! and then urging the rest of them to zoom in on the penis. And they are generally immature as shit, so the rest of them are screaming WHYYYY!!! over group chat. As in, why does Meera want them to zoom in on that specific part? This is _their boss._

Missandei didn’t write a real caption on her post. She just wrote down Grey’s name and she also tagged him in the picture. And since Meera mans Grey’s insta account, she wonders if this means she should like, regram this picture to Grey’s tens of thousands of followers.

Pyp asks her if she’s fucking crazy. Do not regram that picture without talking to Grey first. Otherwise Meera risks being fucking murdered.

She tells Pyp that this sounds like a really amazing and not at all awkward conversation she’s going to have with their boss. She’s gonna get to be like, “Hey, should I be reposting this photo of you naked? By the way, I know what your dick looks like now. I zoomed in.”

Lommy is like, LOLOLOLOLOL!!! DO ITTTT!!!!

And then Meera is suddenly like, OMG OMG OMG, WHY IS MISSY TAKING NAKED PICTURES OF GREY?! OMFG ARE THEY TOGETHER?! OMFG!!!!!

 

 

  
He wakes up when his phone alarm blares and tells him that it’s five-thirty in the morning. He clicks it silent and takes it back to bed with him. He rolls back over to pull her warm half-naked body backwards, tucking her underwear-clad bottom against his crotch as she groans in her sleep.

His arms are holding out his phone in full view of both of their faces as he checks his emails and messages. He blinks some of the sleep out of his eyes as he rolls through a couple of text messages from his friends, mostly of them awkwardly trying to give him shit, but not knowing what to say at all. He mostly gets sent screencaps of Missandei’s Instagram, like he doesn’t know what that looks like and like a link doesn’t suffice. Jaime just wrote a bunch of HAHAHAHAHAHAs at him, for like five messages. Yara texted him to tell him it looks small. And then she quickly added OMG JK DON’T BE HYSTERICAL. Margaery told him that he and Missandei need to call her right away. Drogo told him that he’s glad Grey and Missy are fucking again. Drogo told Grey to please not ruin his entire fucking life by breaking up with her next week. Tyrion told Grey that Tyrion has new spank bank material now.

Grey responds to his messages. He quickly tells Jaime to shut up. He tells Yara to shut up. Grey cannot tell Margaery to shut up because she didn’t do anything to warrant that, so he tells her he’ll call her later. He quickly tells Drogo to, seriously, shut the fuck up about this forever because Drogo _owes this to him_ after the Dany thing. He tells Pod to shut up. He tells Daario to shut up. He tells Sandor to shut up. He goes down his list and tells a bunch of people to shut up and to mind their own business. He thinks Tyrion’s text is especially bizarre, so he texts Tyrion back and is like: _Okay._

She’s awake now — also staring at his phone screen as he furiously texts all of their people and gives them all the same exact message. Like, he is copying and pasting to be more efficient. She says, “Oh, Grey. You’re so bad at smack talk.” She pulls his phone out of his hand. She starts texting for him in full view of him. She taps away on his phone as she says, “You gotta reference your huge cock and tell him you’re going to shove it down his throat until he chokes to fucking death on all of your come, except you spell it c-u-m like a savage. And then you end it by calling him a slut and telling him to spank _that_ to the bank. I know it doesn’t make sense, but it sounds zingy.” Missandei has this kind of vocabulary because she has an older brother like Mars. She hits send.

Tyrion’s response comes back almost right away. He wrote: _Hi, Missy/Drogo. How are you this morning?_

 

  
She convinces him that it’s okay if they are half an hour late getting to the office — because it’s still probably an entire hour before anyone else even shows up. She convinces him with her soft lips touching down on his neck, making him shiver, with her tongue licking his skin, making him shut his eyes, and her soft and smooth body pushing friction against him, making his dick expand and harden underneath her hand. She releases her breathy moans into his ear, and he gets the point. She wants to fuck before work.

When he can’t take the teasing anymore, he rolls them over and he jams his mouth against hers messily.

 

 

  
She can basically be ensconced in him all day. She is sappy and in love and also a huge girl. So she has to talk herself through a bit of insecurity as he starts to withdraw from her — the moment they leave his apartment. She tries to hug him for no reason other than she just wants to — in his hallway — and he is mostly non-responsive. She isn’t sure if she is interpreting what she is interpreting at first, because sometimes he can get distracted — so she tries to kiss him as they wait for the elevator.

He accepts her kiss, and that’s all he does. He mumbles, “Sorry,” as the elevator doors open.

And once they get into his car, his anxiety starts ramping up again. It builds the closer and closer to work they get. The loose and sexy guy that she spent the night with gradually disappears and gets replaced with someone who is extremely tense and forcefully locked down. He starts complaining about the way other people are driving. He starts furtively looking around at the relatively empty streets, like he thinks he’s some criminal trying to evade the cops.

She says, “Yo, you need a lookout?”

And he looks over to her like he’s seriously considering it.

“You’re ridiculous,” she says, cutting him off before he can answer and say something stupid to her. “I don’t know why you’re so ashamed to be seen in public with me. I’m hot.”

 

 

  
After he pulls into the parking garage that he pays way too much a month for and smoothly glides into an empty spot, after he puts his car into park and shuts off the engine, he unclips his seatbelt and pivots his body to face her so that they can have a serious conversation. He says, “Hey, we haven’t talked about this — about work and how we’d handle the whole thing —”

“I’m _not_ going to mount you on the conference room table,” she says. “If that’s what you’re worried about.”

He flashes her a quick smile — mostly to convey to her that he is still kind of fun and chill in addition to being _serious as fuck_ about this. He says, “I don’t talk about my personal business at work — ever. The staff sometimes talks about it, but I don’t respond to it. It’s very important to me that — I just would like to keep it really above board and professional at work.”

He has never addressed the Dany dating rumors with any of the staff. He has given up no details about his history with Missandei — the staff only knows because of Drogo. Public displays have always made him feel very awkward and self-conscious. He just doesn’t like it, and that is not going to change.

He tells her that it’s not because he’s ashamed of her or wants to hide her. He says, “I mean, I let you post up a naked picture of me. That was a gesture of how unashamed I am of you. But work is work. And home is home.”

“Got it,” she says. “I figured.” She clears her throat as he grabs the door handle and exits out the car.

She remembers how he was a little bit more relaxed about this in the past. He was more okay with being together while on the job, and she was the one who pushed for compartmentalization. Obara has this saying about how men either inherit the good work of some woman or they inherit the trauma that some woman wrought. Some other woman has trained the guy or scarred the guy that they are dating. The bizarre thing that Missy is already constantly bumping up against — with Grey — is that she keeps encountering _her own work._ All of the new and pleasant things about him — like how the sex is so fucking good because they got over a lot of their body consciousness, and they talk to each other during sex like a couple of badass motherfuckers now — are because of her. All of the tough things about him — like how he is so against coming across like a human who is capable of bleeding and crying — are probably because of her, too.

“Just try to be normal,” he says to her, already walking ahead. “Because I won’t.” He cracks his neck as he presses the elevator button. He says, “I’m probably going to be a little curt to you in front of people because I am fucking shitty and will probably overcorrect to compensate. I’m sorry in advance.”

“Hey now,” she says softly. “I don’t think you can do that. Preemptively apologize for your bad behavior.”

 

 

 

 


	56. Are Missy and Grey together?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day One of a Real Relationship does not go well for Grey. Or Missandei. Or Drogo. Or Jaime. Or Meera.

 

 

 

He immediately goes into his office when they get to work. He doesn’t say a word to her before he leaves. And she is left standing in the middle of the room. She says, “Oh, okay. I hope you have a nice day, Grey,” to an empty room.

She ends up making the coffee even though he typically does.

 

 

  
Missy can tell that generally everyone has seen her latest 'gram because everyone acts _way weird_ around her when they get into the office. There is a lot of nervous giggling from Jojen and Pyp, for instance. Yoren keeps clearing his throat, for instance. Meera keeps covering her mouth with her hand and looking a little scared as her gaze falls in the direction of Grey’s office.

Everyone breathes a collective sigh of relief when Osha gets into work and flashes Missy her phone — the glowing naked picture of Grey is on it. Osha does Missandei a huge favor by gushing out loud and making no references to sex. Osha says, “Dude — you got the white whale! I am so impressed! This is really great and beautiful! I love this addition to your naked series! Hey — how did you get him to do this, by the way? Did you have to blackmail him?”

“Not really,” Grey says. He’s standing in the open doorway of his office now. His arms are crossed. “She just made a really good case about double standards when it comes to nudity.”

 

 

She watches and generally goes along with it, as Grey briefly and masterfully gaslights all of the kids and makes them think they are all crazy for making a big deal out of his naked photo. He kind of shames them for high-fiving Missandei in appreciation when she took a photo of her nude female form, but they are being so childish and immature when it comes to his naked male form. He just says, “I thought we were all creative professionals here. Or am I fucking wrong?”

Meera starts to wonder about these gender biases she has internalized and is now exhibiting. Jojen starts wondering if he should be taking naked pictures of himself or letting Missy take naked photos of him to further this cause — but he’s not Black and that is probably important to Missy’s work, so nevermind. But there must be _something_ he can do.

Grey doesn’t fool Yoren or Osha one bit. They are older and more experienced, so they know the different and esoteric forms that CYA-ing can take. Osha has her arms crossed and her hip cocked, and there’s an indulgent smirk on her face as she watches him dig himself out of this hole in the span of three seconds. She follows him into his office right after he tells them all to just get the fuck off his face and just get to work.

 

 

  
Missy and Yoren are poised to hop on a conference call with a client. He’s drumming his fingers on the table and kind of staring at her pointedly.

“What?” she says.

“I thought you don’t date coworkers,” he says, now just very transparent in his amusement. “You were very adamant about it.”

“Okay, so technically he’s my boss,” she says. “And I never said anything about not sleeping with the boss.”

He chuckles, his laugh low and warm. He says, “It all makes sense now. How you were able to resist all of my immeasurable charms.”

She laughs, too. She says, “Yeah, Yoren. He _definitely_ out-charmed you. Like, when he freaks out and acts like everyone is out to get him because the recycling doesn’t get properly sorted and there are soiled food containers in the bin — I look at that, and I’m like, _yes,_ cut me off some of _that.”_

 

 

  
“So you look like you had a fun night last night,” Osha says, dragging a spare chair in front of his desk.

“And I wasn’t even drunk,” he says quietly.

“That’s awesome. I’m totally happy for you guys,” she says. And then abruptly changing the subject, she says, “So I need to talk to you.”

“Ah, let me guess,” he says. “You want to drop your hours down even more.”

She nods. “To like, maybe twenty-four a week? Can I do three days? Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays?”

“Dammit, Osha. I don’t like working with Meera as much. I don’t want to hire someone new. I just want to keep working with you.”

She laughs. Because this is as sweet as he gets. And he also sounds like a petulant child. She says, “Maybe you’ll get me back full-time in about five years? When he’s in school?”

 

 

  
Drogo comes into work at 10:30, which she has to talk to him about. She expects for him to give her all sorts of shit about the naked picture. But he actually says nothing about it.

He says nothing about it because Grey texted him a death threat and told Drogo to shut his fucking face forever.

Instead, Drogo just says, “I don’t know how I’m expected to get any work done today when I have like, fucking three back-to-back meetings.”

“You know what would be conducive to getting work done?” Missy says. “If you woke up earlier and got to the office before nine.”

 

 

  
Right before lunch, Grey calls Missandei into his office — which makes Meera start shooting these looks at Pyp and Jojen. Lommy is just snacking loudly on a bag of chips. Pyp is looking at her like he doesn’t understand and he’s fed up with trying to read her mind. Meera opens up Skype and starts furiously typing in their work group chat. She tells them that Missy is in Grey’s office.

Pyp is like, no shit. Everyone saw Missy walk in there. Missy goes in there all the time. So do the rest of them. It’s _normal._

Meera asks what they think is happening in there right now.

Pyp says probably work. Probably work is happening in there.

 

 

They are on a call with Margaery. She sounds pretty upbeat actually — probably because she’s had a litany of meetings with clients all day and she’s in her fake-nice in order to be efficient mode. Marge tells them that she doesn’t like to get smacked in the face and caught unprepared with questions about her client’s latest work. She would also like to have the time to proactively promote their work? Like — she would love it if they sort of put in a minimal amount of effort to help her do her job? She tells Missy that she thought Missy was done taking naked pictures.

“I said I was done taking naked pictures of _myself.”_

“Oh, I see,” Marge says over speakerphone. “I see how this lack of communication and misunderstanding is _my fault._ Missandei, let me ask you explicitly. Are you planning on taking and putting up more photos of naked bodies? Grey’s or anyone else’s?”

“Um, no plans at the moment. But I think I might ask Grey to do a few more. I think I want to build this out to an entire series.”

“Um, I have not agreed to this,” Grey says.

“Okay, well you guys work out the details, then let me know what you decide. And please do not post anything impulsively anymore. Please consult with me so we can schedule these things in a way that actually makes sense. Okie dokey? Sound like a plan?”

“Sounds good, Marge,” Missy says. “And sorry.”

“It’s okay, hon. I know you were just excited and stupid. It happens. Let’s touch base in a couple of days and talk out this series and see what other things we can do with it.”

 

 

  
Jaime has never been to their office before, so he’s a little uncertain that he’s at the right door when he gets there. Osha has gone to lunch, so there is no one around who knows him.

He talks to Pyp because Pyp is looking at him. He tells Pyp that he’s here to see Grey and Drogo. Pyp doesn’t even need to look at their calendars to know that there is no meeting scheduled during lunchtime. Pyp thinks that Jaime is there to sell his bosses something. Like, some sort of sales software or some sort of web advertising. So Pyp starts to tell Jaime to scram, because Grey flipped out the few times in the past Pyp made a mistake and allowed a salesperson face time with Grey. Grey like, _went nuts._ So Pyp works really hard to be a really conservative gatekeeper now. He says, “Um, you don’t have an appointment with them.”

Jaime looks amused. He says, “And I need one? To have lunch with them?”

“Well, yeah,” Pyp says.

And then their conversation gets completely hijacked by Lommy, who suddenly recognizes Jaime and loudly shouts, “Oh my God! I love you!” Lommy is honestly a bit too young to be in the demographic that their show aimed at. The show has also been off the air for a while now. But Lommy has binge-watched the series on Netflix fairly recently. Lommy realizes he has fumbled, and he loudly corrects himself. He says, “Oh my God, I mean love your show!”

 

 

  
When they finish up their meeting with Marge, Grey flips open his door to let Missandei out and also because he has to go remind Drogo that they have a lunch date with Jaime — and he sees that Jaime came a bit early.

“— and when you ate that raw seal!” Lommy says, just bombarding Jaime with fanatical adoration. “That was wild! And when you guys killed that goat, oh my God! I thought it was going to cut away — but then it didn’t! And when you —”

“Lommy!” Grey snaps loudly. “Give him _some space.”_

 

 

  
Once Drogo gets off his phone call and opens the door to his office, Grey calls him out. Drogo sees Jaime and asks him what’s up. Jaime tells Drogo that nothing much is up. Just the normal stuff.

Drogo says, “Cool, man.” And then Drogo asks, “Yo, man, have you been to that fried chicken sandwich place on First and Main yet?”

Jaime is like, “Nah, not yet, man. Is it good?”

Drogo is like, “No idea, man. Haven’t been yet.”

Jaime says, “Oh. Do you wanna go?”

Drogo is like, “Maybe man. I wasn’t putting out a suggestion. I was just curious — if you’ve been there.”

Their rapport is crackling. Like an ex-wife talking to the current wife about the weather.

And probably just to shove it into Jaime’s face, Drogo palms Grey’s chest, giving him a quick rub before he’s like, “What do you think, baby? You feel like eating a chicken sandwich?”

“I could eat a sandwich,” Grey says, shrugging.

“Awesome. Let’s do it,” Drogo says, as he pulls the flaps of his jacket together and starts zipping up. And then he barks, “Missy! You should come, too. Grab your purse, babe.”

“Why?” she says. “Am I paying for lunch? And I already ordered a salad for lunch from downstairs. Because my ass has gotten so fat.”

Drogo spontaneously laughs at that. He actually takes a lot of time to laugh over that as everyone watches him cover up his face so that he can calm down his giggles. When he can manage, he says, “Save your salad for dinner. You should come to lunch. Bring your purse in case your old, fat ass gets carded. We have some shit to talk about.”

“I don’t want to drink though, Drogo.”

“Missy! Just get the fuck up on your feet and get the fuck over here! Why do you always make shit so difficult!”

“Because you don’t ask!” Missy shouts, still getting to her feet. He’s talking to her like how he sometimes talks to the kids. And she doesn’t like it at all.

 

 

  
Grey announces that he’s driving them in his car, speed-walking in front of them, trying to beat them to the elevator for some reason. No one is fighting him on this, but his shoulders are squared like he expects a fight. Missandei knows that he’s rushing to get ahead of her so that she cannot reach out and sexually assault him in front of Jaime and Drogo. Because he is really logical and clear-minded right now. And she is clearly out to embarrass him and humiliate him in public with her obsession and affection. Because that’s what she’s known for. Oppressing men with her love.

Before he steps into the elevator, Jaime politely waits for her to go in ahead, with his hand guiding her back. He asks her how everything is going — how has life been since they saw each other just a few days ago? He asks her if anything is new.

She can’t tell if he’s being dastardly. So she answers him straight because she finds that being truthful and straightforward really just rips the wind from these assholes’ sails. She says, “I have been good. Everything is going well. Not much is new.”

“Nothing?” he says. “You’ve had nothing new happen to you?”

“Nope,” she says, crossing her arms over her chest. “I don’t let things happen to me. I make things happen.”

 

 

  
Grey actually knows he’s being ridiculous, and he can actually feel her patience with him growing thinner and thinner. He lets the door to the restaurant shut right on her because he couldn’t decide fast enough — whether or not to go through first or to let her go through or to hold open the door for her or to not do any of it. His indecision resulted in her foot getting caught in the swing. That made her yelp in surprise and also in pain. She like, limped a few steps before Drogo rushed over to help her and guide her to a seat — and Drogo actually threw Grey a for-real dirty look because Drogo is really easily emotionally manipulated by pretty women in peril.

Drogo reaches down to grab her foot by the ankle. He picks it up and firmly squeezes. He asks, “Are you okay? Does it hurt?”

“Um, I’ll be fine. I just stubbed my toe, is all.” Her beige heel is scuffed with a black mark, which — after she wipes it down with a wet napkin — turns out to be a noticeable gouge. She says, “Oh shoot.”

Jaime asks, “Are those expensive?”

She says, “It’s okay,” mostly for Grey’s benefit — so he doesn’t feel worse. And that basically means that the shoes were very expensive. So he feels _great._

 

 

  
She eyes the hot food that’s been coming out the kitchen kind of enviously. She negotiates with herself, and she tells herself she’s been really good about going to the gym and she’s also been really good about eating well. She tells herself it’s okay to indulge every now and then. She also tells herself that — in no way whatsoever — is her butt actually fat. That was just a really weird and incorrect thing to say about her body. So she goes ahead and eagerly orders a crispy fried chicken sandwich.

 

 

  
Drogo opens it up by saying to Jaime, “So I know we talked a little bit about this over the weekend, and we’ve all had some time to think about it. What are you thinking?”

Jaime shrugs, picking up his sandwich with both of his hands. He says, “Lots of stuff. Mostly that I was really prepared and really looking forward to just not working for a while.” They all nod around the table, because they all know this about Jaime. “But I also think about how fucking awesome it’d be to work together again. And I think about how I’m probably super underqualified and you guys should seek out someone who actually knows what they’re doing? But then I think that I can learn it, just like I learned my dad’s business. And I also think about how terrible it will be if this isn’t a good fit and it just doesn’t work out, since we have a personal relationship with each other.”

“Yeah, man,” Grey says. “All of those things.”

“Man, let’s just do it,” Drogo says, through a mouthful of chicken and bread. “Y’all so dramatic. Jaime can try it out. If he likes it and if we like him, great. If he doesn’t or we don’t, no biggie. We try someone else.”

“I’m with Drogo,” Missandei says. “We can even contract this out for three months and at the end, if it’s just not a good fit, the contract just ends. If it’s a good fit, then we pull him on full time.”

 

 

  
Perhaps because they’ve already went through this once before with Missandei — Grey has already agonized over how smart it is to bring in someone they’ve had a personal relationship with — and because that particular situation worked really well for them — this time, with Jaime, the conversation and the deliberation lasts a fairly short amount of time. They spend twenty minutes chatting it over before it’s decided. They will try.

Drogo starts nudging her and joking around with her. He tells her that they only brought her along to lunch so that later, the kids won’t freak out about how the male leadership keeps instating more male leadership. Later, when Meera complains about this to death, they can tell Meera that Missandei was here and Missandei signed off on this.

Missy doesn’t actually know what to say to his joke. Because sometimes she doesn’t actually think his jokes are funny. His jokes are tiring and depressing sometimes. She says, “Okay. Sure. If you want to use me in that way.”

 

 

  
They are a small outfit, so there’s not really a formal interview process for the leadership thus far. Grey and Drogo are the principals because they started up the studio. Osha came on because she worked with Grey and Drogo. Yoren came on because he worked with Drogo. Missandei came on because she worked with Grey and Drogo. And every junior person submitted a resume and went through a vigorous interview process that lasted several weeks.

This is something the kids have noticed and have commented on. In their viewpoint, though Missy, Osha, and Yoren are great — the word favoritism has been thrown about a few times.

During the retreat, the staff was given the impression that the process of finding a biz dev person would be collaborative, because they were asked what they wanted and what they were afraid of. They assumed that their opinions would carry some weight.

So it’s a surprise to them when, after coming back from lunch, Drogo says, “I want to officially introduce you guys to someone real quick,” lightly patting Jaime on the back. “This is Jaime. He’s very business and sales-minded. He’s a white, straight, cisgender, conventionally attractive alpha male that we are talking to about potentially joining the team.” Drogo clasps his hands together and is like, “So yes,” pointing his forefingers to the staff, like in the style of finger guns. “The answer to that question in your head is yes. Your worst nightmares are coming true.”

Jaime looks at Grey and Drogo really quizzically. He says, “That was a really fucking weird introduction, guys. Thanks.” Jaime clears his throat. And then he starts laughing — chuckling. He says, “Hello, white people who work here. My name is Jaime Lannister. I’m white, too.” He shakes his head, glancing at Drogo and then cracking up because he sees Drogo’s face. He doesn’t even know what the fuck is going on, but Drogo seems to be liking this and that’s enough. To Grey, Drogo, and Missandei, Jaime says, “I don’t know, guys. I feel like it’s also important to mention that I’m really rich.” To the kids, Jaime says, “I like, come from a lot of money. Like, you’ve probably heard of my family. Our name is on a lot of things.”

“Oh my God,” Drogo says. “I forgot to mention that. Oh my God, I forgot that in my introduction. Yes, guys. This motherfucker is rich _as fuck_ and doesn’t need to work for a living.”

 

 

  
The young staff are pretty unhappy, and they start kind of freaking out. This is not at all a surprise to Missy, but it manages to be a big surprise to Drogo and to Grey. She doesn’t know how they are surprised — especially after that bullshit introduction. But she was not consulted on what she thought was the best way to approach this change. Drogo just started blurting stupid shit out of his face like he always does.

“I don’t want to work on car dealership commercials!” Meera shouts.

And Grey is making it way worse by saying, “You don’t get to pick what _you want!_ You do what I _tell you to!_ Because this is _your fucking job!”_

“No!” Meera shouts, as she stands up and starts collecting her things. “Forget it! Screw this!”

“Meera, let’s just talk about this —” Missandei says, trying to get a word in.

“What is there to talk about!” Grey shouts. “If you want to leave because one thing happened that you don’t like — then _leave._ But don’t even _think_ of coming _back.”_

 

 

 

 


	57. Does Meera still have a job or what?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone is unhappy with Grey because he's a monster. Meera wonders if she still even has a job.

 

Meera doesn’t think it’s right, how they are being treated. Within her family, she has a reputation for being too stubborn and headstrong. It took her years, but after a certain point, she had come to realize that everyone else was wrong about her. She is not too headstrong. She is just not demure. This is not a flaw.

It’s deeply embarrassing and just sad, as she picks up her laptop and tries to slide it into her bag — and Grey’s hand comes down and presses down on it. He says, “No. This belongs to me.”

She says, “It has my work on it.” She also takes her laptop home all the time — this isn’t abnormal.

“It’s _my_ work,” he says. “I _own this.”_

And that’s when she realizes that he’s serious — that this isn’t a simple disagreement or a fight. She realizes that he really means it when he told her not to bother coming back if she leaves right now.

She lets go of the computer. She says, “Fine.”

 

 

  
The entire office has been upset and has disagreed with him before — they have called him names under their breath and made jokes about how he’s a royal asshole. But as mad as he has made them, they still understood him. They understand that his drive for excellence and perfection makes him hard to work with sometimes. Even when he was pushing them brutally, they still felt respect for him.

Watching Meera leave — and watching Grey let her leave — they’ve never felt such little respect for him than at that moment.

The rest of the day is quiet. Jaime leaves the office without saying much else — just that he’ll talk to them later. Drogo is reluctant to disagree with Grey publicly, because he doesn’t think that he should disagree with Grey in front of the staff. So he just commits to finishing out the rest of the day because they have a shit ton to do. Missandei ducks her head down, too, and after she sends Meera a text urging Meera to call her later — she goes back to work with Jojen and Lommy.

 

 

  
He’s in a foul mood for the rest of the day. He’s angry, pissed, and he can barely see straight. He’s pissed over this generation gap. He would have never have been so fucking entitled when he was at that age. He would never have talked back to his boss in front of everyone when he was younger. He still wouldn’t even do that _now._

He’s also mad at himself. Meera probably reminds him of who he isn’t. She’s good at standing up for herself. He can be bad at standing up for himself. An ongoing issue that he faces is this fixation that he might be too obedient and subservient sometimes. He is so inoffensive because he had to be. When he was younger, if he was loud and vocal and _seen,_ he was harassed for being different. He was never afforded the luxury of being able to say whatever the fuck he wanted to authority figures — and his staff _does._ He carries his own context forward, and he can’t help but blame some of it on their whiteness, not just their age and their circumstances. They talk back to him because they grew up being told that their voices deserve to be heard. He can’t even fucking talk like a fucking normal human being half of the time — because the messaging he constantly got from birth was that he needed to shut the fuck up. He needed to shut the fuck up in order to stay safe — whether in the context of puberty, work, or his daily life. This makes him _so angry._

He keeps clenching his hands because they are shaking from adrenaline. And he just pushes through and just shuts out the noise so that he can focus on the work.

 

 

  
At the end of the day, the rest of the staff leaves quietly and without saying bye to him. The rest of the staff is going off to meet Meera for dinner, actually. They’ve been furtively messaging with her ever since she left. Pyp and Jojen have quietly been texting her and telling her that they’ll help steal her files, and they’ll send it to her so that she can add stuff to her portfolio — in case she wants to get that up to snuff since she might be unemployed now.

 

 

  
“Okay,” Missandei says tiredly when it’s just the three of them left, pulling off her reading glasses so she can rub the bridge of her nose. “What the hell was that?” she says to Grey. “You realize that you went off the deep end, right? You realize that you have to go find her and apologize and beg her to come back, right?”

“I don’t _beg!”_ he snaps — echoing what he said when he and Drogo were trying to hire her. “I am not here to make anyone do anything they don’t want to do. I’m not here to assuage egos and coddle these fucking kids! I pay them a good wage. And they should just fucking do their jobs. This is not a fucking _family._ We can find someone to replace Meera.”

“Bud,” Drogo says. “I do not agree with you right now.”

“Okay,” Grey says, sneering. “Well this isn’t a fucking democracy.” He’s also echoing stuff that Drogo has said — just to remind Drogo that he is not fucking alone in how _this feels._ Grey says, “So we’re not putting this up to a vote. You _can’t_ make me apologize.”

“What is even your end game here?” Missandei says, gesturing to his desk, his body, and just him in general. “What is the plan? Is the plan to drive everyone away until you are just all alone so that you can tell yourself that you were right the whole time? It’s just best to never let anyone get close to you?”

“We’re _not_ talking about us right now, Missandei,” Grey says warningly.

She sighs. She says, “I’m leaving.” And then she realizes what she said and she starts to chuckle humorlessly. Because now she’s all fucking worried about accidentally stepping on the wrong place in his minefield of triggers. She clarifies and says, “I’m leaving the office and heading out. I’m tired. It’s been an exhausting day. I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”

And on her way out — because she’s unhappy with Grey, because he has a litany of fucking rules, because she just needs the space from him, because he currently is incapable of making space for her again — Missandei pats Drogo on the chest and gives him a quick hug before she gathers up her bag and coat and exits. She is giving him what he wants. He doesn’t want to be close to her outside of the terms he sets.

 

 

  
When they are alone, Drogo says to Grey, “Seriously, what are you _doing?”_

And all Grey can respond with is a tight shrug.

Drogo says, “Bud, I can’t hang out with you tonight. I kind of want to. I just didn’t realize you were going to go ballistic and fire one of our best employees on the spot. I would stay and fight this out with you, but I have plans with Dany. I’m sorry. I love you, though.”

“I love you, too.”

 

 

  
When Missandei gets to the dark restaurant — with the throbbing techno music and the really elaborate sushi and over-adorned cocktails — it takes her a while to find them because the place is huge. They are sitting in something that looks like it’s trying to be a hip tatami room, and Meera starts tearing up when she sees Missandei.

Meera is crying because she keeps re-realizing that she will not get to work with these people anymore. She doesn’t get to make cool stuff with Jojen and Lommy. She doesn’t get to joke around with Pyp. She doesn’t get to make fun of Yoren for being so old-school. And she doesn’t get to be mentored by Missandei anymore.

Missy says, “Sweetie, it’ll be okay.”

 

 

  
Jaime is busy with Brienne. Drogo is busy with Dany. Tyrion is busy with his family. Yara is busy with Theon and their father. Missandei is fucking pissed at him.

So he’s on his own for the night.

He just goes home and cleans his place. He runs a load of dishes, and he does laundry. He picks up items of her clothing from where they were dropped. He picks up her blouse, her slacks, her bra, and her panties. And he has to search for and pick out the labels for all of these articles so he doesn’t wash them in the wrong way. He has to run a few cycles. He hangs her bra and underwear up to dry over his shower door.

It’s getting late and he’s wondering where she is, if she’s at home.

That’s about when he realizes that he actually doesn’t where she currently lives — he doesn’t know exactly where her new apartment is.

 

 

  
Missy’s hand is clasping Meera’s forearm and gently squeezing it as she tells Meera to not be so fatalistic and pessimistic. Missy doesn’t really think Meera is fired. For one, there’s an entire procedure around terminating an employee that involves a fair bit of documentation and paperwork. Like, it’s actually hard to just fire someone in the heat of the moment. Also, Missy and Drogo completely do not agree with Grey on this — they are not siding with Grey on this at all. So, it’ll actually be fairly hard for Grey to make this stick.

“It’s not just that,” Meera says softly. “I don’t want to keep working there if he doesn’t want me there.” Her lower lip quivers as she gets emotional again. “I don’t want him to put up with me because you and Drogo won’t let him fire me.”

“It’ll be okay,” Missandei says — and to Meera’s ears, it sounds ridiculously and unrealistically confident. “Don’t worry. It’ll work out.”

 

 

  
Meera feels silly over how nice everyone is being to her. She’s gotten so many pep talks and so many reassurances from everyone. Yoren threatened to punch Grey out on her behalf. Jojen kind of lightly throws out that he’ll quit with her in solidarity — and he immediately looks like he regrets articulating this gesture, lest she hold him to it. She laughs and tells him it’s okay.

They are in the middle of bitching about Grey — about how Grey is the biggest fucking pain in the ass sometimes and the only reason he gets away with his behavior is because he’s so fucking talented. What kind of society do they live in where a Black man can act like a white man just because he’s so fucking talented?

That’s Missandei’s joke, and she’s giggling into the heel of her hand and swaying around in her seat a little bit as she nudges Yoren — who is trying to tell her that being a white man actually isn’t all it’s cracked up to be — when a text message comes through on her phone. The phone is face up on the table and glows with a message preview — and Grey’s name. The text preview just says: _Hey._

Missandei immediately flips her phone over, hiding the message — but not before Meera sees it. She says, “Okay, for real. Are you guys a thing or not?”

“Um,” Missandei says.

“Oh my God,” Meera says, just looking at Missandei’s face. Unlike Grey, Missandei has a terrible poker face. Missandei’s face currently says that she’s done naked things with their boss and she is currently kind of ashamed of what she has done. Meera’s jaw drops. “You guys are _totally_ a thing!” Meera says, slamming her hand on the table. “I knew it! He fucking made me think I was crazy!”

 

 

  
Meera is not currently shipping them strongly. Meera actually feels sorry for Missandei, because Missandei is sleeping with a psycho. That psycho is their boss. Their boss is a fucking psycho and probably punishing and bossy and mean in bed.

Nonetheless, Meera asks Missandei how long it’s been going on.

Missandei tells them all the truth — because she just doesn’t get why this has to be the biggest secret. She tells them that it’s probably been going on — off and on — for about a year and a half. Maybe almost two years.

Pyp’s jaw drops. He says, “No way!”

“Way, man,” Missy says.

“The whole time!”

“Yeah, man.”

“Wow!”

“Honestly,” Yoren says, dipping another piece of sushi into soy sauce even though he’s beyond full. “I thought that part of his attitude problem was due to the fact that he wasn’t getting laid.”

“Oh, well let me dispel that myth,” Missandei says, laughing. “That attitude problem is actually just his personality. That is actually just _him.”_

 

 

  
He just doesn’t feel like being alone. He came to this conclusion when he finished folding up her clothes and he didn’t know where to put them — like, in a drawer? Like, in a pile on a chair? Like, in a bag? Like, in his closet?

So he texts her to ask her where she is, what she is doing, and if she is open to seeing him.

It takes her probably an entire hour to text him back, and he feels pretty terrible in that hour. His mind concocts all sorts of stupid scenarios about how she is punishing him because she is mad at him, which is completely against character for her, so he doesn’t even know why he thinks like this. She is fucking great and fair all the time. He’s a fucking dipshit all the time.

When she finally texts him back, it’s to tell him that she just got done with dinner, and she’s heading home. She tells him that he can come over and meet her at her place if he wants.

He has to ask her for the address.

 

 

  
He beats her there, just by five minutes. He waits at the front door for her, even though one of her neighbors offered to let him in so that he can wait comfortably in the lobby. He declined the offer because he doesn’t think that her neighbor should be so fucking lax with security and just let any fucking person into the building. He is thinking that this fucking building isn’t safe at all, and he is already worried about her — which is one of the many fucking annoying things about being in a relationship and being emotionally invested in another person.

She parked underneath the building in the garage, so she lets him in from the inside. She’s still in her work clothes. She says, “Hey,” as she pushes open the door.

He says, “Hey,” as he grabs her hand right away, as he lets her lead him up to the right unit.

 

 

  
They spend a little bit of time making small talk — just catching up. He tells her he did a bunch of laundry and paid some bills. His life is fucking riveting. She tells him that she went to dinner with the staff, actually — with Meera and the rest of them. That’s where she came from. The staff generally feels upset, insecure, and also scared — scared that any of them can just get fired at any moment now. She says, “It’d actually be cute if it wasn’t so sad.”

 

 

  
He follows her into her bedroom’s bathroom so that he can keep talking to her as she changes out of her clothes. He’s seated on her closed toilet seat as he watches her pull out her earrings before depositing them on a tray. He tells her that he thinks her new place is nice. It’s nicely decorated. It’s better than the basement apartment. It looks more expensive.

She’s unbuttoning her blouse in front of him as she tells him that it’s definitely way more expensive. Her shirt is held together by tiny white buttons. Her bra underneath is this creamy color. The swells of her breasts collapse just a little bit as she unhooks her bra and takes it off. She rubs at her sore shoulders and at the places where the underwire of her bra was cinched into her skin.

“I’ll talk to them all tomorrow,” he says, sighing and staring at her breasts. “I’ll tell them that they cannot actually be fired at any moment. And I’m going to apologize to Meera tomorrow. You’re right. I went off the rails. By a lot.”

 

 

  
It’s basically almost bedtime. They wake up pretty early for work, so she brushes her teeth, ties up her hair, moisturizes her face, and he tells her that he didn’t have any foresight, so he has nothing to wear for work tomorrow. She asks him if he has any in-person meetings tomorrow. He does not. So she has him take off the clothes he is currently wearing so that she can wash them and get them in the dryer so that he can wear them again tomorrow.

He’s lying naked in her bed and waiting for her to come back.

When she does, he grabs onto her. He pulls her down. He holds onto her tightly. He kisses her, sighing against her mouth as his body finally relaxes.

 

 

  
She tells him that the entire staff knows they are together — that they are sleeping together. She tells him they asked her about it, and she told them the truth. She predicts that he’ll be upset about this. She says, “I don’t expect for you to hold my hand or kiss me in front of people — I’m not asking for that. But I don’t think I deserve what you’ve been doing. Like, you shut a door on my foot.”

He sighs. He says, “I’m real sorry about that. That was completely an accident.”

“I know,” she says. And then she says, “I want you to show up. When I ask you to come to dinner with my family or my friends — I want you to show up to these things with me.”

“Okay,” he says. “I’m hearing you. I’ll come to a lot of these things. But you gotta understand that I have a hard time being around people all the time. I need time to myself sometimes.”

“I know,” she says. “Just tell me when you want space. Don’t wait until you can’t take it anymore and then you end up exploding and saying just a bunch of angry things at me.”

“Yeah,” he says. “I can be better about that. And I need you to be explicit. What you want me to do and what you want to hear from me — I need you to tell me explicitly. I don’t like guessing, and I don’t like having to work hard to figure out stuff that you can simply just articulate to me.”

“Okay,” she says. “I can do that.”

 

 

  
She explicitly tells him that she wants to cuddle. She tells him she likes how warm he is and the way he smells — but mostly the way that he feels in her bed. She tells him that she doesn’t think she gets enough cuddling from him. She generally wants more cuddling. She also tells him that she’s using the word cuddle _so much,_ and she sounds like she’s six years old.

He laughs softly as he rolls fully onto his back, and he pulls her with him, pulls her so that her face is pressed against his bare chest and her limbs are draped over his legs and torso. He asks, “Is this about right?”

“Yeah,” she mumbles into his skin. “This is awesome. I’m loving this so much, _oh my God.”_ She softly kisses the fleshy and soft area where his armpit meets his chest. She says, “I love you.”

He grabs her hand. He moves it so that her palm lays over his heartbeat. He says, “Say it again.”

She chuckles softly. And then she says, “I really fucking love you, Grey. I don’t even know why because you are terrible sometimes. But I’ve loved you. I’ve been in love with you. I currently love you. I will keep loving you. I cannot stop.”

There is a pause of silence on his end, before he decides that he might as well be transparent about this. He tells her, “So I was trying to do this super smooth romantic thing where you tell me you love me and then I show you how my heart beats a little faster when you say it. But then you totally fucked that up by making me like, super emotional with your words. Thanks a lot, Missandei.”

 

 

 

 


	58. The kids are back together again!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grey unfires Meera and apologizes. The kids want more responsibility and a bigger say at work. Grey has a hard time expressing his sexual wants and desires.

 

 

 

Being in a relationship is not really something that comes intuitively to him. Part of this is driven by his fears of being abandoned again. And part of it is that he tells himself that he’s bad at relationships and then he buys into his own self-created narrative.

He doesn’t really know how to act around her. When they were just having sex with each other, things were simple and his actions were singularly focused — on fucking her or on getting fucked by her.

He wakes up before she does. They have drifted apart over the course of the night, so they are not touching. She’s lying on her back and her arms are raised over her head, resting on her pillow. She sleeps with openness, not curled up tightly.

 

 

  
To him, it seems like she wakes up because she can sense that he is staring her at her like a creep. She wakes up before her alarm goes off, by blinking vigorously and touching her eyes. She notices he’s in bed with her with a doubletake — which would be hilarious if it didn’t make him feel so self-conscious. She then smiles and rolls over to give him a smooch on the cheek. She groggily says, “Morning,” as she rubs her nose into his skin. Then she says, “Oh shit, you need a razor!” She’s saying that because her nose just got scratched up by his stubble. And then she laughs at herself and says, “Okay, that was a bit of an overreaction. I actually have a spare razor. We’re totally fine. It’s a lady razor, though I don’t know why I just said that because all razors are the same, and it’s all marketing. Oh man, I read something about how female razors are the exact same as razors for men, but they are priced higher because _the world is sexist._ So annoying!”

He’s actually kind of stunned by how she just woke up and just started _talking so much._

Because he’s so used to being alone, he generally wakes up in silence and starts his days in silence. He doesn’t speak his first words until maybe nine o’clock. He doesn’t know if he’s meant to respond to her whole thing about razors — and before he can delve real deep into his paranoid mind, Missandei throws the covers off of her body, and she gets out of bed. She stands up with her back to him, and she stretches.

She’s wearing a loose tank top and just a pair of panties. He sees cords of feminine muscles in her back as she stretches. He sees her calves tighten up as she rocks onto her tiptoes. Her underwear is kind of old and kind of threadbare and see-through. Her shirt rides up and he sees the dimples sitting over the curve of her butt. Through the fabric of her underwear, he can distinctly see her cheeks and the valley in between. He thinks that her ass fucking looks amazing, and he would like to get in it.

He feels so fucking stupid because he doesn’t even know how sex works in a relationship anymore. He’s thinking that he doesn’t know what her morning routine is — he doesn’t know how she gets ready for work. She probably has an entire ritual and procedure, and he’s just going to fuck it up by coming onto her. She will probably swat him off and tell him not now because it’s not an appropriate time. And then he will feel like, really awkward and kind of embarrassed over that and just fucking die a little bit inside because he is fucking repulsive.

He rolls over onto his stomach, burying his face into her pillow.

She misinterprets what is going on in his head. She cheerily says, “Oh, go ahead and sleep in a little more. I can wake you up in like, fifteen minutes.” She actually crawls back onto the bed, on her hands and knees. She lowers herself to rub her face into the back of his neck. She kisses him there and also on his shoulder blade before she says, “I love the look of you in my bed.” And then she pushes herself up and off so she can go get ready. He can hear her laughing at herself.

He doesn’t realize that her really good mood is not really normal. She’s not actually a morning person. But today, she’s just so happy because she woke up with him.

 

 

  
He is going to have breakfast with Meera — it took a lot of texting and a lot of bullying for this to happen — so he and Missandei are not going into work together.

Missandei is smelling great and wearing more casual clothes today because she has no meetings. Her arms are hanging over his shoulders and his hands are lightly on her hips as they say goodbye at her door. She’s swaying her body, moving his along with hers.

On her end, she cannot believe it. She _cannot_ fucking _believe it_ — he’s just here, and he’s with her — _by choice._ She cannot fucking believe that she has him back. There was probably a part of her that thought that she’d never realistically _actually_ get him back.

He’s being weird. He has barely said two words to her. Of course she has noticed — but it’s also normal for him. She doesn’t comment on it because she knows it will make him feel awkward. She just closes the distance between their bodies and their mouths. She kisses him by the door, experimentally at first because she doesn’t know how he will receive the kiss. She puckers her lips and softly presses them against his, with her eyes partly open. Her lashes flutter shut as he starts kissing her back — his hand tightening on her hip, pulling her a little closer. This whimper sound comes out of her as the kisses slowly and languidly and iteratively deepen. She full-on moans as he pushes this tongue into her mouth, and she opens way wide as their teeth clash.

She holds herself close to him, when they finally part. She wants to say something to him — something meaningful to kind of mark this moment, but she laughs when she swings her head back and sees him better. She says, “Oh, shoot,” as she reaches up and smears her thumb against his full lips. “Your mouth is all purple,” she says. She had forgotten that she has lipstick on. “It’s a nice color on you.”

He says, “Ah, I messed up your lipstick.”

 

 

  
Meera chooses to eat breakfast at this ridiculous hipster place that puts lavender into all of their shit — but it’s okay. He can be cool about this.

When he sees her, he waves a little bit — and it’s immediately awkward. They have to wait a few minutes for their table, and they say pretty much nothing to each other in that time.

 

 

  
He doesn’t ever see the point in beating around the bush, so he immediately says, “I’m sorry — I was fucking terrible to you yesterday, and it wasn’t right.” He says, “I don’t want you to go. I want you to stay.”

He tells her that he actually cannot get by without her — especially since fucking Osha has been stepping down more and more. He tells her that he has come to really depend on her. He tells her that he’s really fucking sorry about what went down. He tells her that he got angry and then he got unfair, which tends to happen when he gets angry. It’s not an excuse — it’s just an explanation. He tells her that her concerns about Jaime or a new biz dev person are valid, and he’d like to talk it out with her.

She starts crying — just like she doesn’t even give a shit that they are out in public, eating among a bunch of other humans. He finds it mortifying because it gathers attention.

Meera is crying because Grey is so stingy with compliments, positive reinforcement, and affirmation.

He says, “Hey, are you okay?”

She’s kind of sobbing as she says, “This is just _so great._ It’s everything I ever wanted from you.”

He can’t tell if she is fucking being sarcastic or not. He says, “Okay.”

 

 

  
Meera finally calms her ass down once the food arrives. Once the food arrives, it’s like a switch flips in her. She says, “Ooh!” cooing over her caramel nori waffles with curried bacon. This is shit he hates eating. But it’s cool. It’s okay. It’s fine.

He cuts into eggs — he was a complete asshole and asked for three unadorned sunny-side-up eggs with salt and some toast. Like, he went off menu and the server asked him if he was sure. He told her he was sure as fuck — the aggression of it threw her. And now she is wary and kind of overly polite around him. He hates that, too. It was a mistake to say something aggressively. This is precisely why he hates this kind of food and this kind of environment. But it’s cool. It’s cool. No big deal.

“Oh my God, this is _so good!”_ Meera says, shoving food into her face. But it’s fine. People are allowed to like what they like. And she’s a young white girl who lives in a huge city, so it makes sense. “Do you wanna try some? This waffle is so crispy.”

“Nah, I’m good.”

“Oh, okay!” she says peppily, like he didn’t just make her cry five minutes ago. He does not understand women. She says, “Well, if you change your mind, feel free to try some!”

“Thanks.”

 

 

  
“Sooo . . . you and Missy, huh?”

She says this just as he’s raising his latte to his face. He has to put it back down into the saucer so that he can properly say, “No. Nope.” He shakes his head. “Uh uh. No. I don’t think so. Nope.”

It’s vague enough that Meera says, “Wait, you guys are not together? But she told us that —”

“I mean I’m _not talking about it_ with you.”

“So it’s true!” Meera squeals. She’s back to shipping them because she no longer thinks that Grey is the devil incarnate. “Oh my God! I love it! I love it so much! You guys are so _perfect_ and _cute_ together! Oh my God! You guys are a power couple! Oh my God, I can’t even!”

 

 

  
Meera’s insane sunshine continues to radiate. She doesn’t own a car, so he has to drive her ass into work because it seems silly to make her take the train when they are going to the same place. Though he was fucking severely tempted to make her take the train just so he could get a fucking break from her.

She chats with him in the car — about her entire life. Which he hates. She tells him about the dates she’s been going on. She met the guys on Tinder. She tells Grey that no one has really stuck out as special yet. She tells him she tried to go out with other creatives — but then she found that young creatives are kind of douchebags, and she also ended up feeling kind of competitive with them. So then she swung the other way and tried to go out with engineers and accountants — but holy moley — they tend to have very little in common.

She asks him when he knew that Missandei was “the one.” Meera does air quotes. She is completely not honoring his wishes to not talk about it.

“I know you guys used to date back in the day. Was she just the one that got away? Did you know immediately that she was the one? Or was it something like — a gradual realization? Like, did you wake up one day and just say to yourself, ‘Oh my God, I cannot live without this woman’? See, I think I get too wrapped up in initial chemistry and if that’s not there, I write the guy off. But it seems like the best relationships start out as friendships — is that how it was for you guys? Or was the attraction always there? I mean, Missandei is so gorgeous. And you’re like — okay, you’re my boss — so I probably shouldn’t say anything —”

“Oh my God, Meera, shut the fuck up,” Grey says, actually reaching out to increase the volume on the stereo, so that he can drown out her talking.

 

 

  
The office is somber and kind of tense — because they are all waiting for Grey to appear and just ruin their entire day again. They all know that Grey is really late coming into work because he’s meeting with Meera — she texted them to tell them. They do not trust that the outcome of breakfast will be positive.

So it’s completely jarring when Meera explodes into the office with a loud, “Guys! I’m back! It’s cool! It’s cool! We talked it out. I’m back!”

 

 

  
The kids are fucking ridiculous. They were together just _yesterday._ They all had dinner together. They have not even been apart for more than _twelve hours._ But they are acting like fucking Meera came back after an entire year-long sabbatical or something. There is so much hugging, so much screaming, so much jumping.

“Oh my God!” Lommy says, hopping up and down, grasping onto Jojen’s shoulder and Meera’s sleeve. “The team is back together! The team is back together!”

“Man,” Drogo says, trying to hold back his laughter. “The last half of a day must’ve been really stressful for you guys. It was probably the most traumatic thing to have happened in your entire short lives.”

“It was!”

 

 

  
In the conference room, Grey lists out Jaime’s merits. Grey says that Jaime works really hard — he’s not actually a person that is idly rich. Grey says that Jaime turned around his family’s formerly mismanaged company in about five years. Grey says that Jaime also has the family name, so he comes with a shit ton of connections to high profile companies and people. Jaime comes with celebrity on top of that — lots of people know him as a TV presenter and it’s a good fit for the work that they do. Jaime also will not make them do car dealership commercials. That was a fucking joke and they need to fucking get their sense of humor right. Jaime generally veers overly artsy and toward unrealistic production budgets, which hopefully means that Jaime will be good at finagling such money from clients.

“Holy shit,” Drogo says. “You’re actually selling _me_ on Jaime. And I was the one who actually initially suggested this. I just didn’t think through the details.”

“Shocker,” Grey says dryly.

 

 

  
Osha doesn’t really care that much. She knows Jaime. Jaime is fine. Jaime is sometimes great. Jaime is sometimes terrible. It’s more of the same ol’ same ol’ to her.

Grey resists rolling his eyes because ever since Osha had her baby, she has been really fucking about that baby and not as much about work.

Yoren is also fine with Jaime. He also doesn’t care that much. Biz dev and creative always end up clashing at some point. It’s normal. He’s done this and has gone through this many times before.

The young staff members — who are going through this for the first time — are still worried. They want to know about the hierarchy. Would Jaime be another boss of them? Would they get a say in what projects they get put on? Would they get a say in what the deliverables are? Will they still get to drive some of the creative?

Grey says, “I honestly don’t know. This is stuff we have to figure out. A lot of this has been filtering through me and Drogo, but with Jaime onboard, we’d actually get looped _out_ — so you’ll be dealing with Jaime for a lot of this stuff.”

“But he’s not a creative,” Meera says. “I feel comfortable taking marching orders from you guys because you’re creatives.”

“Yeah, man,” Drogo mutters. “But that’s the problem. We’ve been balancing both sides — and sometimes really badly.”

“I think with Jaime on board, Drogo and I can actually do more work — so we’ll still work closely with you guys, but in a different kind of way,” Grey says. “Like, we’ll actually have some time to teach. So that you aren’t constantly continuing to do shit all fucking stupid, like you were born fucking yesterday.”

 

 

  
The kids want to interview Jaime. They want to vet him themselves. They tell Drogo and Grey that they are tired of the tyranny. They tell Grey and Drogo that they understand that Drogo and Grey are the big bosses and they get final say on this type of thing — and they know that Grey and Drogo have great taste in people and have never been wrong yet. Like, Missandei, Yoren, and Osha are awesome.

But if Grey and Drogo can elicit their buy-in through collaboration instead of through decrees, then that might result in a more harmonious work environment, which will result in greater efficiency.

They are speaking Grey’s language on purpose. The effort is so transparent. And he has to stop himself from smiling at them like he is proud of them. He just forces himself to stay blank. And he says, “Okay. If it really fucking means that much to you guys, you guys can have Jaime come in.”  
  
“This is really cute,” Drogo mutters, being patronizing on purpose — because he cannot help it sometimes. “You fuckers are gonna interview Jaime fucking Lannister. What questions are you going to even ask him?”

“I’m going to ask him what his favorite episode to make was,” Lommy says.

“Valyria,” Grey answers succinctly. They cannot tell if Grey is lying or not. “And don’t ask him that in a job interview, Lommy. By the way — I don’t know if this is obvious to you guys or not — but Jaime is also not completely sold on working with us. Remember, he doesn’t need to work to live. He works when he has belief in what he is doing. And job interviews go both ways. So it’s also up to you dum-dums to sell yourselves to him. You also need to make him want to work with your dumb asses. _Good luck._ I hope power and responsibility is everything you are hoping for — _and more.”_

“You think it’s _so easy_ to be us,” Drogo says, pointing at all of them. “You think we just boss you around and tell you what to do because it’s fun. Well, here’s your chance to do it better, kiddos.”

“Guys,” Missandei says, softly breaking in. “This is transitioning. It's going from healthy, transparent communication to threats. Just wanted to point that out in case you weren’t aware.”

“Thank you, Missy,” Drogo says. “I actually was not aware.”

 

 

  
Grey is kind of riding high on his interpersonal accomplishments of the day. He was a good boss today — and that feels _awesome._

He wants to finish his day with sex. He wants to finish the day with at least two orgasms. They haven’t had sex since yesterday morning — which sounds ridiculous because it hasn’t even been _that long,_ but it also feels like it’s been _forever._

He doesn’t know how to convey this to her. He feels shy and dumb about it.

“Bud, you got dinner plans?” Drogo asks. Drogo is following up because he and Grey haven’t touched based in a while — and maybe they need to, after yesterday’s craziness.

Missandei is standing right there — she’s got her purse strap clasped in her hand as she pulls on her jacket. She’s watching them and listening to their conversation.

“Uh, no. No dinner plans,” Grey says, because it’s the truth. And he doesn’t know how to be smooth and suave and convey to Drogo that he doesn’t want to fucking have dinner with Drogo tonight because he’d rather go get laid.

“Great!” Drogo says. “Let’s grab a bite and catch up.”

“Is that cool?” Grey says with uncertainty, directing the comment at Missandei.

Missandei is operating under the assumption that since Grey asked her to be explicit about what she wants from him, he would do the same with her. She smiles easily at him — because she thinks he’s asking permission instead of asking for her to bail him out. She fondly says, “You don’t need to check in with me to have dinner with Drogo. That’s really cute though. But yeah. Go ahead and have fun together, guys. I’ll see you both tomorrow.”

She gives Drogo a kiss on the cheek and a hug. She gives Grey a friendly pat on the shoulder. Because she actually thinks this is what he wants from her. She thinks this because of _everything he has ever done_ and _every signal he has ever given to her._

Grey watches as sex basically walks out the fucking door and leaves for the elevator.

“So, what do you feel like eating!” Drogo says enthusiastically after Missandei is gone. “I’m actually really glad you’re free because I’m more than a little sick of Dany’s rabbit food. I think I’ve lost weight because her lifestyle has infected me. Man! Sometimes it’s just nice to get a break from the woman, you know what I mean?”

“Yeah,” Grey says in a deadpan. “I totally get what you mean.”

Drogo is not picking up on the fine nuances of Grey’s communication style either.

 

 

 

 


	59. It's so hard to say goodbye to yesterday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As life goes up and down, one thing has always stayed the same: How much Drogo loves Grey. But that's about to change.

 

 

 

  
Grey’s phone silently buzzes in his pocket about five minutes after she leaves. He tells Drogo that he has to go pee real quick before they leave for dinner.

The men’s room smells like lemon peels and bleach. He shoves open a stall and sits down on the toilet as he reads the text. As suspected, it’s from her. She is wishing him a good dinner and a good night with Drogo. She tells him she’s very glad that he worked things out with Meera, and that he’s listening to the kids more. She tells him that she loves him very much. She asks him if he might be available on Sunday to come to family dinner with her.

He texts her back quickly as he sits on the edge of the toilet seat. First of all, he tells her to not text and drive. Then he starts to write out that he already misses her — and then he deletes that message before he can send it because he sounds fucking ridiculous and needy, and she left the office like _five minutes ago._ Instead, he starts to write out that he really cares about her — and then he starts deleting that too because it is fucking lameass shit to write that in response to someone telling him that she loves him. He tries to figure out a transitional statement to write in between telling her not to text and drive and telling her that he’s free on Sunday and that he can go to family dinner with her and get his ass fucking beat by her brother. Like, he’s available to have that happen to him.

He sighs. So much time has passed already. Drogo probably thinks he’s taking a dump. Grey writes: _I’m free Sunday. Have a good night, Missandei._

 

 

  
Pretty much right away, something is off between the two of them. Drogo suggests that they ride to dinner in his car — he’ll drive for old time’s sake. However, Grey, who is no longer transportation deficient, generally never wants to be too far from his own vehicle. Grey suggests that they just drive to the restaurant separately for the sake of efficiency. This way, Drogo doesn’t have to backtrack and drop Grey back off at work after dinner.

A short argument springs up from this. Drogo is bossy and wants Grey to just go along with what Drogo wants. Grey is tired of being everyone’s fucking bitch, which is actually an assessment that is not at all accurate and reflective of reality, but he often has a warped sense of self.

The tension snaps with a sigh. Grey says, “Fine,” and then resentfully climbs into Drogo’s car.

 

 

  
He doesn’t know why Grey is being such a fucking downer because as far as Drogo knows, everyone had a pretty nice day.

Grey is pretty quiet as they eat. He doesn’t carry any jokes forward, and he is very distracted and internal. Yet, all the usual culprits for Grey’s bad moods do not currently apply.

Drogo is having a hard time intuiting what is actually the what, probably because Drogo has gotten so used to Grey’s personal life being a complete and utter shitshow. Drogo has spent his entire 30s being a pillar of support for his broken-hearted friend, and that involved a lot talking, a lot of distracting, a lot of care and comforting. He doesn’t know why Happy Grey would be in a mood.

Drogo puts up with the awkwardness for as long as he can by ignoring it, up through the end of dessert. He has already assumed that maybe Grey and Missandei had yet _another_ fight, and he has already asked Grey if everything is going okay with Missandei. Grey responded with, “Yeah, everything is fine,” before he went back to his food.

At the end of dessert, which they are sharing, which Grey barely takes a bite of, Drogo can’t take it anymore. He says, “Are you mad at me or something?”

Grey says, “Nah, man. We good.”

Drogo skeptically says, “Oh. Mmkay.”

 

 

  
Drogo gave up his night for this. He has spent an obscene amount of time with Dany lately, trying to work on their fucking relationship by being really present and really engaged. He has gone to a bazillion of her fucking work events. He has smiled like a puppet and behaved in a way that is non-threatening and inoffensive to the folks she does work with. He has spent a lot of time dissecting their differences with her. He is fucking _exhausted,_ and it actually would’ve been fucking amazing to get a night to himself and just mindlessly relaxed with a few bottles of beer, some fatty and cheap junk food, and sports highlights. That would’ve been fucking amazing — but he pushed his ass to ask Grey out to dinner because _why not_ spend the night having really deep conversations with another person who is really shitty at communicating their emotions? _Why not_ do that?

Grey is clearly bothered by something. Grey also had a bit of meltdown in the last day. Grey has spent the last week overeating like crazy. Grey has been tense, moody, and really bewilderingly inconsistent. Drogo is not an idiot. Obviously shit has been going down in his bud’s life.

And he refuses to let Grey just fucking go home after dinner. He bullies Grey into going out and grabbing some drinks together. Grey initially doesn’t want to. Grey says, “I’d just rather go home.”

Drogo says, “Nah, you’re getting a drink with me.”

 

 

  
Grey is completely bitter that he is being forced into drinking alcohol. They drove to dinner in Drogo’s car, and Drogo basically is refusing to drive Grey back until they grab a drink. Grey hates that his choice was taken away by Drogo — just like sex was taken away by Drogo — so he starts clamping down even more. He is determined not to have fun. He orders a water from the bartender because who fucking even cares? He ignores Drogo’s gaze as he takes the water and starts gulping it down.

“What are you? Eight years old?” Drogo asks, twisting a cube of chalk over his pool stick. “You wanna break?”

“Whatever,” Grey mutters, swinging his pool stick around and almost hitting a woman in the back of the head with it.

“What is even happening here! This is not us!”

Grey points to Drogo with his stick. He says, “Man, you need to get over your romantic notion of us.”

“Man,” Drogo says. “You’re just saying shit to try and hurt me and get under my skin. I ain’t falling for your shit.” Drogo lays his hand on Grey’s back and starts rubbing it. Grey flinches and goes rigid — and that honestly makes Drogo feel super self-conscious and also annoyed and frustrated. Drogo says, “What is going on with you, man? Why are you being such a fucking dick to me? Did I do something to make you angry? Is it because I didn’t let you drive?”

“No, it’s not that. But that still wasn’t cool.”

“I just want to drive sometimes! Is that still okay sometimes? Jesus Christ!”

“And I tried to compromise on that, but you refused to drive separately!”

“We always drive together though!” Drogo says. “We fucking listen to our playlist, and we fucking shoot the shit while we drive! That’s why I wanted to fucking drive! I had our music already locked and loaded!”

“Man, Drogo, just because we’ve done something for like, fucking a gajillion years together doesn’t mean that we just have to keep on doing it. Do you expect that we’re just going to fucking be 80-year-old men, fucking driving around and listening to music together?”

“Yeah man!” Drogo shouts. “Except when we’re 80, we’ll be fucking flying on spaceships or whatever the technology is at that time! Why you fucking trying to _kill us?_ Do you not want to fucking hang out with me as much anymore because you’re with Missy again?”

 _“No,”_ Grey says testily. “It’s not _that.”_

And Drogo stands there, waiting for further explanation or further clarification. However, he gets none. His eyes bug out. He says, “Okay?” Then he says. “So why do you look like you’ve been having a _great time_ with me?” Drogo shakes his head. And then he loudly says, “Just kidding! I am lying! You actually look like you’ve been having a fucking terrible time with me. And that is frustrating and hurtful because I am _really_ tired, but I made time _for you,_ man. You seemed like you were having a rough go at life, and I wanted to make sure you’re okay. But you just seem to resent me for it, _so much._ That just sucks, man. What did _I do_ to make you upset with me? And I realize that I sound like a fucking jilted lover, okay? I can fucking hear how fucking ridiculous I sound right now, okay? I know you’re my friend, not my fucking boyfriend.”

 

 

  
Drogo racks, lifts up the triangle, and then gestures for Grey to break, which Grey does — really accurately and aggressively. Drogo lets out a low whistle and says, “Have you been practicing?” And then he mutters, “So I’m solids.”

Grey tells Drogo that he has not been practicing. Grey continues to answer Drogo’s jaunty comments with the unadorned truth, which has been a real fucking buzzkill for all.

Drogo can distinctly remember standing in this very spot years ago and feeling a completely different sort of way. He can remember how guilt-ridden he was years ago. He can remember the insecurity of feeling like he always came in second to Grey. He can remember the surety of his own scumbaggery because he was sleeping with a woman that he thought was Grey’s soulmate. He remembers the ghost of Missandei hanging over that entire night.

Right now, he feels no more guilt. He still comes in second to Grey in many ways. Big fucking deal. Drogo is not a scumbag. He deserves his own happiness. Dany is too fucking awful to be predestined for anyone. Missandei has resurfaced as a tangible, living, breathing person who is actually not the source of all evil. She is actually really great, and they are both perhaps at least a little bit undeserving of her.

 

 

  
Grey’s having a hard time pinpointing the exact cause of his shitty mood. He can generally gesture to the general issue — it is Missandei. Rather, his relationship with Missandei. It’s just a lot of pressure. He feels really anxious because there’s a lot going on and stuff is just changing so fast. In the last month, he went from being a single and super eligible bachelor to being in a really locked down relationship with someone fucking amazing because — _what else is he going to do?_ In the last year, he bought himself a car and has to pay insurance on it. In the last two years, he moved out of his studio apartment in a building that did not even have an elevator and smelled like mildew — to a building that is forty floors tall with a doorman on staff. Grey's company is growing pretty quickly. And he just keeps getting older — and as he gets older, more and more is expected of him. He cannot skate by on youthful ignorance anymore.

He feels panicked over this. He feels worried and scared that he is ill-equipped to handle increasing responsibility. A story that he tells himself constantly is that he tells himself that he is just lucky. He is lucky to have survived when his parents died. He is lucky to have survived without them. He is lucky to have not died from a brain tumor. He is lucky to have suffered pretty much no physical ill-effects from some freakish developmental delay. He is lucky that he basically gets to do what he wants for work and people will just pay him lots of money to do what he loves. He is lucky that with no prior experience and no formal business education, he has managed to keep his business running and keep his staff paid. He is lucky that some gorgeous-ass intelligent woman happens to think he’s not a fucking weirdass freak — and she actually wants to be with him.

Because the story he keeps telling himself is that he keeps stumbling haplessly into luck — instead of actually being calculated or meticulous or smart about things — it’s very easy for him to feel afraid over the possible of luck running out. Because hot streaks end. The house always wins. Lives end up in tatters.

 

 

  
“You think Jaime is a smart decision?” Grey asks, right after he handily wins the first game.

“Let’s put it this way,” Drogo says. “I don’t think he’s a dumb decision.”

“What if we’re overreaching?” Grey means that as the business grows, so do expenses and overhead. He does not want to go back to working fifteen-hour days to pull in the same money because expenses have increased. They are talking about hiring a bunch of new staff members. What if their regular client base cannot support new staff? What if they bring on Jaime, and Jaime is a terrible fucking fit and it doesn’t work out? Then they’d be out a biz dev person, stuck with a flawed strategy, wrapped around a fucking biz dev person that they had to let go — who is also their really good friend. What if all of that terrible shit happens?

“I don’t know,” Drogo says.

Grey sighs. Because between the two of them, Drogo has always been the believer. And Grey has always been the thinker. Drogo’s ability to blindly believe dwindles the older and more experienced he is. Grey’s tendency to overthink has gotten worse the older he gets — because he knows more. They are actually becoming worse versions of themselves.

“Okay,” Drogo says. “I don’t think that’s true. You’re really pessimistic.”

 

 

  
Drogo is late getting to Grey’s place because he stopped off at a late night grocery store to buy chips, beers, and pints of ice cream. Because he can still have the night he originally wanted for himself — but with Grey.

 

 

  
Grey can keep eating because of course he can, so he cracks open the junk food without even batting his eyelashes. He starts crunching loudly on chips as Drogo noisily searches around for a bottle opener — he also grabbed a bottle of wine on top of the beer. Drogo keeps seeing all of these signs that signal the passage of time. Like, he is pulling out expensive wine glasses from Grey’s cabinet because they are fucking _first world problems now._ They’re fucking Jenny from the Block. Just really out of touch with the reality of how other people _live_ now.

“You know what I tell myself to console myself?” Drogo says.

“What?”

“I tell myself that if I lose it all tomorrow, it’d be okay. I’m not that out of touch. I can still sleep in the dirt. I can still walk on broken glass barefoot. I can still eke out a living just traveling the world by myself, shooting video or taking photos.”

“And what about Dany?” Grey asks in a droll tone of voice. “Where is she in your fun fantasy of professional ruin?”

“Man, I don’t know. She probably leaves me or something. She probably breaks up with me or something.”

“More realistically, she’ll probably bail you out and float you for a bit,” Grey says. “She’s rich, you know.”

“Yeah,” Drogo says. “That sounds like that’d be great for our relationship.”

 

 

  
Grey has eaten about half an entire bag of potato chips when Drogo’s phone rings. Drogo apologizes for the interruption — even though they are sitting on Grey’s couch watching a dumb romantic comedy because Drogo actually likes romantic comedies. Grey pauses the movie as Drogo gets up from his seat to give himself a little privacy. Drogo says, “Hey, babe. What’s up? Everything okay?” as he leaves the living room and walks out onto Grey’s balcony.

Grey takes the opportunity to pull up his phone to check his messages — something he has refrained from doing in Drogo’s presence because he didn’t want to fucking get teased or have an entire conversation about it with Drogo.

There’s just one message from her. All it says is: _Okay!_

That’s in response to him agreeing to dinner on Sunday night with her family.

He checks the time. It’s ten. She is probably still awake.

 

 

  
He has to hide himself in his own bathroom because he’s a fucking moron who has some sort of mental block when it comes to transparently showing happy emotions. He locks his bathroom door so that Drogo cannot get in and then he sits on the closed toilet seat again. He reaches out and turns on the faucet so that it’ll drown out the sound of his talking. He already hates himself because he’s so fucking ridiculous.

He listens nervously as the line rings.

When she picks up, her voice is soft and whispery. She says, “Hey, Grey. What’s up?”

He feels so fucking stupid. He says, “Oh my God, were you sleeping?”

She says, “It’s okay.” She repeats, “What’s up? Why are you calling? Is everything all right?” She now sounds alert and sort of alarmed, because he is ridiculous, and he has done this to her.

“Yeah, everything is completely fine. Don’t worry.”

“Oh, okay,” she says. He can hear her yawning. “Why are you calling? Are you done with Drogo?”

“Ah, I’m still with Drogo.”

“Oh, okay.” And then there is a long pause, one in which he says nothing. They just listen to each other breathe for a moment before she says, “Is he right there with you?”

He says, “Ah, no. I’m in the bathroom. He’s on a call with Dany.”

“Oh,” she says. “Okay. How come you called me?”

And he decides to just go for it. He decides that he actually has nothing to lose. He says, “I just wanted to hear your voice before bed.”

“Oh. Wow. Okay.”

“I just wanted say goodnight.”

 _“Baby,”_ she says softly. “That’s so _cute._ Oh my God. You’re so fucking _cute._ I’m _so glad_ you called.”

 

 

  
After Grey hangs up his phone, turns off the faucet, and exits the bathroom, Drogo is actually waiting for him — having finished his own conversation with Dany already. Drogo does not comment on how weird it was that Grey locked himself in the bathroom to have a conversation like he thinks he’s a spy or something.

Instead, Drogo says, “Dany just wanted to know if my mom or any of my sisters have any specific allergy. She wants to send them boxes of her beauty line — but she also doesn’t want to accidentally poison their faces.”

 

 

  
At the end of the night, they are lying in Grey’s bed. As always, Grey is wearing a t-shirt and shorts. As always, Drogo would totally be naked if not for Grey’s request that he at least wear some sort of pants.

Instead of bumming the both of them out by asking if they have finally fucking outgrown this habit — Grey instead opts to ask, “Do you think we’ll still be having sleepovers together when we’re 80-years-old?”

“I don’t know,” Drogo says. “It seems like it’d get logistically hard if either one of us gets married. Then it’s like, scram, wife. Tonight is my buddy’s night.’” Drogo adds, “Dany still thinks this is weird. Not necessarily the sleepover bit. I think it’s the part where we actually sleep in the same bad that is kind of weird to her. But you know, she only feels that way because she can barely stand having _me_ sleeping in the same bed as her. So, consider the source. Does Missy know we do this?”

“You know what? I don’t know. I’m not sure it has ever come up in conversation yet. Have you told her?”

“Me? Nah, I don’t think so. I don’t recall.”

“Yeah,” Grey says. “It’d be kind of awkward to tell her about it because I’d probably have to tell her how it all started. And it started because she trampled my heart and left me to die in heartbreak. So I was lonely. But you were there, weren’t you?”

“I was.”

 

 

  
Drogo quietly mutters that the struggle is real. They’re not hopping around from hotel to hotel and living out of suitcases anymore. They’re not cool, twenty-something world travelers anymore. They are boring adults who are chock full of responsibility.

Drogo quietly mutters that neither of them are alone anymore. They have options other than each other. Like, they have women who care about them. And this is actually fucking depressing as shit. Being with Dany is fucking depressing as shit sometimes. He probably loves her, but it’s crazy that he loves her. Because she’s such a fucking terrible _bitch._ Who is sometimes racist.

Drogo mutters that it’s depressing as shit because it’s like, the end of an era.

Grey says, “Sometimes I think I’m kind of sentimental about my own pain. It’s kind of like an old friend. It’s kind of like — you and me against everything else — we had a lot of fun together when I was in pain, didn’t we?”

“Man,” Drogo says. “We had _so much fun_ together while you were in pain, and I was a hot mess of a slob. It fucking sucks now. You’re happy. Kind of. I’ve got my shit together. Kind of. It’s just — so fucking sad.”

“I feel like this is a break up. I feel like we are breaking up.”

“Grey! Don’t even fucking say that!”

“Do you remember what I said to you in the Summer Isles in bed? Before Missandei and I started up again? I told you that it’s you, and it’s me. The world can burn down, and the ladies — they can come, and they can go. But at the core of it all — it’s always gonna be you and me.”

“Yeah, man. That was fucking romantic _as fuck._ I _loved it.”_

“Drogo, we’ve got to leave some of it behind. We’ve gotten too used to just being each other’s number one. But we’ve got to allow space for other people.”

“Man, Dany _sucks!”_

“Missandei is nowhere near as funny as you are.”

“No shit, Grey. Like, she is too judgmental to be super funny sometimes.”

“Dany doesn’t get that you’re hilarious.”

“She doesn’t!”

“Missandei doesn’t always get that I’m hilarious.”

“She _doesn’t!_ She doesn’t get you like I get you.”

“I know, man. But it’s okay, man. She gets me in other ways. It’s okay. It’ll be okay. We’ll be okay.”

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
